Emacs Commune

The AI Laboratory in the 1970s was a unique place where everything came together. Cutting-edge research was conducted here, and the strongest specialists worked, making the Laboratory always a point of reference in the computer world. Its hacker culture and rebellious spirit created an aura of a sacred space around it. Only when many scientists and programming 'rock stars' left the Laboratory did hackers feel the mythic and ephemeral nature of the world they lived in.

The Laboratory was like Eden for us, - Stallman recounts in an article Forbes in 1998, - no one even thought of isolating themselves from their colleagues instead of collaborating.

Such mythological descriptions underscore an important fact: the 9th floor of Technosquare was for many hackers not only a workplace but also a home.

The word 'home' was used by Richard Stallman himself, and we know how precise and careful he is with his statements. Having gone through the 'Cold War' with his own parents, Richard believes that until Curry House, his Harvard dormitory, he simply didn't have a home. According to him, during his Harvard years, he was haunted by only one fear - the fear of being expelled. I doubted that such a brilliant student like Stallman faced the risk of getting kicked out. But Richard reminded me of his characteristic issues with discipline.

'Harvard highly values discipline, and if you skip classes, you are quickly asked to leave,' he said.

After graduation from Harvard, Stallman lost his right to on-campus housing and never had the desire to return to his parents in New York. So, he followed the path paved by Greenblatt, Gosper, Sassaman, and many other hackers - he entered graduate school at MIT, rented a room nearby in Cambridge, and spent most of his time at the AI Laboratory. In his 1986 speech, Richard described this period:

Perhaps I have more reasons than others to say that I lived in the Lab, because every year or two, for various reasons, I found myself without shelter, and in total I lived in the Lab for several months. I always felt very comfortable there, especially in the hot summer, because it was cool inside. However, it was quite common for people to stay overnight in the Lab, driven at least by the frenetic enthusiasm that possessed all of us at the time. Hackers sometimes simply couldn't stop and worked at the computer until they were completely exhausted, after which they would crawl onto the nearest soft horizontal surface. In short, it was a very relaxed, homely atmosphere.

But this homely atmosphere sometimes created problems. What some considered home, others saw as a den of electronic opium. In the book "The Power of the Computer and Human Motivation", MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum harshly criticized the "computer explosion" – as he termed the infiltration of hackers into computer centers like the AI Lab. "Their wrinkled clothes, unwashed hair, and unshaven faces indicate that they have completely abandoned themselves in favor of computers and do not want to see where this might lead them," Weizenbaum wrote, "these computer addicts live only for computers."

Almost a quarter of a century later, Stallman still gets upset when he hears Weizenbaum's term: "computer addicts." "He wants us all to be mere professionals – doing work for money, getting up at the appointed time, and leaving everything related to it behind," Stallman says passionately, as if Weizenbaum is nearby and can hear him, "but what he considers normal I see as a disheartening tragedy."

However, the life of a hacker is not without tragedy. Richard himself claims that his transformation from a weekend hacker to a 24/7 hacker is the result of a series of painful episodes from his youth, from which he could only escape in the euphoria of hacking. The first such pain was graduating from Harvard, which abruptly changed his accustomed, calm way of life. Stallman enrolled in graduate school at MIT in the physics department, intending to follow in the footsteps of greats like Richard Feynman, William Shockley, and Murray Gell-Mann, so he wouldn’t have to travel an extra 2 miles to the AI Lab and the brand-new PDP-10. "I still devoted almost all my attention to programming, but I hoped that I might also get to study physics on the side," Stallman recalls.

While studying physics during the day and hacking at night, Richard tried to achieve the perfect balance. The fulcrum of these geeky seesaws was the weekly folk dance club meetings. This was his only social connection with the opposite sex and the world of ordinary people. However, closer to the end of his first year at MIT, disaster struck—Richard injured his knee and could no longer dance. He thought it was temporary and continued going to the club, listening to music, and chatting with friends. But the summer ended, his knee still hurt, and his leg was functioning poorly. Then Stallman sensed something was wrong and grew concerned. "I realized it wasn’t going to get better," he recalls, "and that I would never be able to dance again. It just killed me."

Without the Harvard dorm and without dancing, Stallman’s social universe immediately collapsed. Dancing was the only thing that not only connected him to people but also provided a real opportunity to meet women. No dancing means no dates, and this especially upset Richard.

"For most of the time, I was completely depressed," Richard describes this period, "I could do nothing and wanted nothing but hacking. Utter despair."

He almost stopped interacting with the world, completely immersing himself in work. By October 1975, he had effectively given up on physics and his studies at MIT. Programming had transformed from a hobby into the main and sole focus of his entire life.

Now Richard says it was inevitable. Sooner or later, the call of hacking would have overshadowed all other attractions. “In mathematics and physics, I couldn't create anything of my own; I couldn't even imagine how it was done. I was only combining what had already been created, and that didn't satisfy me. In programming, I immediately understood how to create new things, and most importantly – you see right away that they work and that they are useful. It brings immense pleasure, and I want to program again and again.”

Stallman is not the first to link hacking with intense pleasure. Many hackers from the AI Lab can also boast of abandoned studies and unacquired degrees in mathematics or electrical engineering – simply because they were so enamored with programming that all academic ambitions drowned. It is said that Thomas Aquinas, with his fanatical pursuits in scholasticism, delved into visions and the sense of God. Hackers reached similar states on the brink of otherworldly euphoria after hours of concentration on virtual processes. Perhaps that's why Stallman and most hackers avoided drugs – after twenty hours of hacking, they were like 'high'.

Source: linux.org.ru

Free as in Freedom in English: Chapter 6. Emacs Commune

Emacs Commune