Commune of Emacs

The AI lab in the 70s was a special place, everyone agreed on that. Advanced research took place here, the strongest specialists worked here, so that in the computer world the Laboratory was constantly at the forefront. And her hacker culture and rebellious spirit created an aura of sacredness around her. Only when many scientists and "programming rock stars" left the Laboratory did the hackers feel all the mythology and ephemeral nature of the world in which they lived.

“The lab was like Eden for us,” Stallman says in the article. Forbes 1998 - it never even occurred to anyone to isolate themselves from other employees instead of working together.

Such descriptions in the spirit of mythology emphasize an important fact: the 9th floor of the Technosquare was for many hackers not only a workplace, but also a home.

The word "house" was used by Richard Stallman himself, and we know very well how accurate and careful he is in his statements. Having gone through the Cold War with his own parents, Richard still believes that before Carrier House, his Harvard hostel, he simply did not have a home. According to him, in his Harvard years, he was tormented by only one fear - being expelled. I expressed doubt that such a brilliant student as Stallman was in danger of being thrown out. But Richard reminded me of his characteristic discipline problems.

“Discipline is very valued at Harvard, and if you miss classes, you will be quickly asked to leave,” he said.

After graduating from Harvard, Stallman lost his right to a hostel, and he never had a desire to return to his parents in New York. So he followed the path trodden by Greenblatt, Gosper, Sussman, and many other hackers, going to MIT graduate school, renting a nearby room in Cambridge, and spending most of his time at the AI Lab. In a 1986 speech, Richard described this period as follows:

Probably, I have a little more reason than others to say that I lived in the Laboratory, because every year or two I lost my home for various reasons, and in general I lived in the Laboratory for several months. And I always felt very comfortable there, especially in the heat of summer, because it was cool inside. But in general it was in the order of things that people spent the night in the Laboratory, if only because of the frenzied enthusiasm that then possessed all of us. The hacker sometimes simply could not stop and worked at the computer until he was completely exhausted, after which he crawled back to the nearest soft horizontal surface. In short, 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 Computer Power and Human Motivation, MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum scathingly criticized the "computer explosion," as he called the colonization of computer centers like the AI Lab by hackers. “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 can lead them,” Weizenbaum wrote, “these computer scourges live only for the sake of computers.”

Almost a quarter of a century later, Stallman still loses his temper when he hears Weizenbaum's expression: "computer scourges." “He wants us all to be just professionals – doing work for the money, getting up and leaving at the appointed time, putting everything connected with it out of our heads,” Stallman says so furiously, as if Weizenbaum is nearby and can hear him, “but what he considers the normal order of things, I consider a depressing tragedy.”

However, the life of a hacker is also 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 of adolescence, from which it was possible to escape only in the euphoria of hacking. The first such pain was the end of Harvard, it dramatically changed the usual, calm way of life. Stallman went to MIT graduate school in physics to follow in the footsteps of the greats Richard Feynman, William Shockley, and Murray Gel-Mann without having to drive the extra 2 miles to the AI Lab and the brand new PDP-10. “Almost all of my attention was still devoted to programming, but I thought maybe I could do physics along the way,” says Stallman.

Studying physics by day and hacking by night, Richard strived to achieve the perfect balance. The fulcrum of this geeky swing was the weekly meetings of the folk dance club. It was his only social connection with the opposite sex and the world of ordinary people in general. However, towards the end of his freshman year at MIT, a misfortune happened - Richard injured his knee and could not dance. He thought it was temporary and continued to go to the club, listen to music, chat with friends. But the summer ended, the knee still hurt and the leg did not work well. Then Stallman became suspicious and worried. “I realized that it would not get better,” he recalls, “and that I would never be able to dance again. It just killed me."

Without a Harvard dorm and without dancing, Stallman's universe of social life immediately collapsed. Dancing is the only thing that not only connected him with people, but also gave him a real opportunity to meet women. No dancing, no dates, and that was especially upsetting for Richard.

“Most of the time I was completely depressed,” Richard describes this period, “I could not do anything and did not want to, except for hacking. Utter despair."

He almost ceased to intersect with the world, completely going into work. By October 1975, he had effectively abandoned physics and his studies at MIT. Programming has turned from a hobby into the main and only occupation of a lifetime.

Now Richard says it was inevitable. Sooner or later the sirens of hacking would overpower all other urges. “In mathematics and physics, I couldn’t create something of my own, I didn’t even imagine how it was done. I only combined the already created, and it did not suit me. In programming, I immediately understood how to create new things, and most importantly, you immediately see that they work and that they are useful. It brings great pleasure, and you want to program again and again.

Stallman is not the first to associate hacking with extreme pleasure. Many of the AI Lab hackers, too, can boast of abandoned studies and missed degrees in mathematics or electrical engineering, only because all academic ambitions have drowned in the sheer delight of programming. It is said that Thomas Aquinas, by his fanatical studies of scholasticism, brought himself to the visions and sensations of God. Hackers reached similar states on the verge of unearthly euphoria after many hours of concentration on virtual processes. This is probably why Stallman and most of the hackers avoided drugs - after twenty hours of hacking, they were like "high".

Source: linux.org.ru

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

Commune of Emacs

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