PC Pioneers: 10 Hackers Who Made History. The computer world has a rich history of hackers who steered the progress of computer science and gave shape to computers, the internet, and networking as we see it today - in some cases single-handedly.
While the term “Hacker” today carries a negative connotation of an ill-intentioned computer genius, that’s only a small portion of what the word really means. Yes, there are the Black Hat hackers behind internet mayhem, thievery, and chaos, but there are also White Hat hackers who use their computer savvy for good. There’s also a different kind of hacker entirely: the tinkerer. They all played parts, big and small, in creating the computer world as it exists today. IKEA Hackers. Inside the secret world of hackers. Hackerspaces are the digital-age equivalent of English Enlightenment coffee houses.
They are places open to all, indifferent to social status, and where ideas and knowledge hold primary value. In 17th-century England, the social equality and merit-ocracy of coffee houses was so deeply troubling to those in power that King Charles II tried to suppress them for being "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers". It was in the coffee houses that information previously held in secret and by elites was shared with an emerging middle class. Net-Art collection #1 : Google Map.