Episode: 2142
Title: HPR2142: Book Reviews
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2142/hpr2142.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 14:51:08

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This in HPR episode 2,142 entitled Book Reviews, it is posted by M1 on our 0R5H4D35 and
in about 16 minutes long, the summary is, I take a brief look at two books others may find
on interest.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com, get 15% discount on all shared hosting
with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
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Hello world, it's mirror shades here again.
So today I'm going to do another book review and this book isn't a, this isn't as common
title that you hear about, it's an interesting book, even if it's not, it doesn't talk anything
really about the technical side of hacking, so if that's something you're looking for,
this isn't a book for you, but it is an interesting book to pick up, I bought it used, I think
you can find this on Amazon pretty cheap, I actually think I only gave a penny plus
shipping for this book, so it's called Hacker Culture, it's by Douglas Thomas and it's
an older book, it actually came out in 2002 and what the book covers is mainly Hacker
Culture and Computer Culture of that time and he covers a lot of the stuff from the 90s
and kind of how it came from the Hacker Culture of the 80s and the 70s and some of you
probably just aren't, you know, it's not going to be of any interest to you whatsoever,
but I find that stuff fascinating, I like reading about it, I like reading about the
history of modern computing and Hacker Culture particularly of the 90s, I grew up in the
80s and the early 90s, so it made it a lot more fun because this wasn't the kind of thing
I had access to back in the day, so getting you read about it now is pretty cool, it's
some of the book, if you actually pick it up and read it, some of it is really interesting
and then there's a couple of sections which will, I don't know, it'll kind of drone
on a little bit, he tries to, this really reads like somebody's dissertation or something,
you know, like this started out as like a college paper or study and something, but the author
you could tell he at least had some passion for subject matter, so it's not like it's just
a big boring dry document, so real quickly I'm going to read you the contents here just
so you have an idea of what's in it, there's part one, the evolution of the Hacker and that's
divided up into subsections, Hacker Culture, Hacker as the performance of technology reading
the Hacker manifesto and then Hacker in the 1990s, those are pretty straightforward,
the second section where he talks about reading the Hacker manifesto, he actually, he kind
of breaks it down from, I don't know if it's a psychological or maybe sociological, some
of the implications there, then part two, it's a hacking representation and the first chapter
is representing Hacker Culture reading frack and you know if you might be too young now to know
what frack was, frack was like a, kind of like, I don't know, an electronic magazine sort of if you
think about it like that, they published articles but they were essentially like ASCII text if I'm
not mistaken and you had to actually dial into their like BBS or whatever to get it but they were
circulated back in the day and then when the internet got bigger I think maybe they had a website
you could download from, I don't remember it but it is a very interesting read and then the next
chapter is not Hacker subculture style and media incorporation and then part three is hacking
law, technology and punishment, the judicial construction of the Hacker and then there's an
epilogue that's actually written by Kevin Mittenick and Chris Lamprick, I hope I said his name right, so the book let's see it's like
said it came out in 2002, it is a little bit dated, it if you like stuff from that period or if you if you want
to know about that culture from that time period it is a very interesting read because it does capture sort
of the essence of, let's face it, these were a lot of teenagers and young like early 20s guys who
were into this stuff back in the day, so it does capture that really well, like I said there are a few
parts where the author kind of he starts to drone on a little bit and he gets a little wordy but over I mean it's worth
the price obviously I mean if this book was a penny plus shipping I think so overall it cost me $4 and it was
fun to read it's not it's not a technical book, so you're not going to get you're not going to you know learn how to
hack or anything like that it's not that kind of a book but I think it was worth checking out they sell it on Amazon
I'm not sure about other resellers but yeah anyway so I'm actually going to do a second book today too
just because I don't want this episode to be completely crazy short so the next book I want to talk about it is a little more technical
and this book is called a history of modern computing and it's by Paul E. I'm going to try to say his name Saroozy
it's spelled C-E-R-U-Z-E-I so if you're looking for it on Amazon or Barnes and Abel or whatever it's actually put out by MIT press
and if you have any real interest at all in computers and where they came from and how they got to be where they're at today I would highly recommend this book
I haven't read it recently I do I'm looking forward to reading it again I read it once some years ago when I was in college the first time
and I actually had a PDF of it but I liked it so well that I bought a hard copy
well I said it is hard copy but it's a softback book I'm not totally sure if they release this in hardback now the other book
agriculture the copy I got's hardback if that's something that you know some people are very
particular about that some people only like to buy hardbacks because I like them on their shelves or whatever I don't know whatever your preference is but
my copy of this book is paperback but it's a really really good book
like I said it's from MIT press and this this book starts with Charles Babbage and goes all the way up to
you know I don't remember where it stops I know this book is a little dated now let me see if I can locate the
looks like this the one I've got is the first edition from 2000 I think it's been reprinted since then
so I think it goes up this copy probably goes up to there
um it goes all the way up to 2000 and I do believe there's a newer version that goes a little further
but it's really really great it talks about it not just
not just computers as we know them but like mechanical computers and adding machines and
like tabulation machines I mean it spends a lot of time in the excuse me the the mainframe era
and there is so much of the mainframe era that I just did not know and some of it was really
fascinating to read about so just real quick I want to go over the the table of contents in this book
there's an introduction defining computer and then chapter one is the advent of commercial
computing 1945 to 1956 um chapter two's computing comes of age 56 through 64
chapter three the early history of software 52 to 68
and that's 1952 to 1968 I'm sorry if I'm not being those aren't page numbers those are
years uh chapter four is from mainframe to many computer 1959 to 1969 and then chapter five
the go-go years and the system 360 that's 1961 through 1975 uh chapter six is the chip and its
impact 1965 to 1975 and chapter seven is the personal computer 1972 through 1977
um chapter eight's augmenting human intellect 1975 through 1985 and then chapter nine's work
stations Unix and the net 1981 through 1995 and then there's a conclusion the digitization of
the world picture um so it's a little over 300 pages um like I said I think this one I think the
one I read that had a PDF of was actually a newer printing of this or something because I seem
to recall there was a little bit I think it went a little bit more into modern times than just
the year 2000 but it is absolutely if you are interested at all in in computer history this is
the I can't recommend this book enough this is the one to get um because it is very uh it's it's
very factual but it's not dry you know it wasn't boring it was actually a lot of fun to read this book
um I don't know maybe I'm just more of a hardcore nerd or something yes I'm I'm sure some people
would find this book very boring but um it's uh it's very thorough as well there's um you know it
talks about a lot of the different manufacturers of of mainframes I did not know that back in the day
Honeywell made mainframes um and there was a mainframe manufacturer right here in Kentucky actually
in Louisville didn't know that um there's a lot of great information in this it's not again
this isn't the kind of book that you buy to learn how computers work um it is to a certain extent
there is some technical stuff in here I don't think there's anything in here that the average reader
with an interest in computers couldn't figure out I don't think there's anything super
technical it is mostly um a history but it's like I said I can't recommend this book enough it's um
again this is another cheap book too if you go on amazon and you look for the used copies I
I don't think I paid very much for this I I think I might have paid less than a dollar for this
not including shipping so shipping was maybe four or five bucks um both of these books really
good if you were just going to buy one I would probably buy history of modern computing uh
hacker culture is it's an it's an okay book um it's not quite as fun to read as some of the other
books I might review later um I would say if you were wanting to read something that was sort of
90s-ish um well really it was more 80s-ish uh the book the kukuzeg if you've never read that
that's by Clifford Stall that's a really good read um I have a couple other books that um
hopefully in the future I can do some reviews of I have um what is it I think I have a book called
cyberpunk which I believe that's Katie Hathner and John Markov uh there's a lot of that books
a little controversial though a lot of people said that book was one sided so I don't know I'll
I'll read it and let you know what I think it it probably is it it it never really it didn't do
very well um I don't think sales wise um I have a um I actually have the book that I took my handle
from mirror shades which is a cyberpunk anthology by Bruce sterling or it's edited by Bruce sterling
I may do a review of that later down the road a couple other books I'm looking at reading
haven't gotten the chance to read I don't have a whole lot of time right now um just sit and get
to to read anything uh but hopefully um soon I'll be able to um pick up a couple of these titles
and do some reviews or if any of you out there have already read them and but like that that would
be great I would like to hear other people's opinions on them uh a couple of books that I've
got lined up here soon I want to read are uh the soul of a new machine uh Tracy Kitter um and
Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson um and uh well there's a book I have read I'm not going to review
that this episode but there's a book uh little brother but Corey doctoro I'd never um I'd never
actually this sounds bad I never heard of of Corey doctoro before I I found that book and um
he actually I'm sure many of you are already familiar with him but um he makes all of his books
free to download on his personal homepage now they're just um they're simple files uh just simple
ebooks um I think some of them may even be plain text but uh um I downloaded it from his website
and it was such a fun book to read that I did buy a hardback copy of it uh for the bookshelf um I
might I might talk about that one later that was a that was a pretty fun book to read um so
if any of you have already read those I would love or have an opinion about these two books maybe
read them and be like them you don't like them leave a comment and um I will talk to you guys
later thanks for listening you've been listening to hecka public radio at hecka public radio dot
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