Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-kth--d07c28-So, that was the AI lab. But/en

So, that was the AI lab. But what was the culture of hackers like aside from their anarchism? In the days of the PDP-1 only one person could use the machine, at the beginning at least. Several years later they wrote a timesharing system, and they added lots of hardware for it. But in the beginning you just had to sign up for some time. Now of course the professors and the students working on official projects would always come in during the day. So, the people who wanted to get lots of time would sign up for time at night when there were less competition, and this created the custom of hackers working at night. Even when there was timesharing it would still be easier to get time, you could get more cycles at night, because there were fewer users. So people who wanted to get lots of work done, would still come in at night. But by then it began to be something else because you weren't alone, there were a few other hackers there too, and so it became a social phenomenon. During the daytime if you came in, you could expect to find professors and students who didn't really love the machine, whereas if during the night you came in you would find hackers. Therefore hackers came in at night to be with their culture. And they developed other traditions such as getting Chinese food at three in the morning. And I remember many sunrises seen from a car coming back from Chinatown. It was actually a very beautiful thing to see a sunrise, cause' that's such a calm time of day. It's a wonderful time of day to get ready to go to bed. It's so nice to walk home with the light just brightening and the birds starting to chirp, you can get a real feeling of gentle satisfaction, of tranquility about the work that you have done that night.