A very informal
atmosphere.See Stallman (1986). The lab's home-like atmosphere could be a
problem at times. What some saw as a dorm, others
viewed as an electronic opium den. In the 1976 book
Computer Power and Human Reason, MIT researcher Joseph
Weizenbaum offered a withering critique of the "
computer bum," Weizenbaum's term for the hackers who
populated computer rooms such as the AI Lab. "Their
rumpled clothes, their unwashed hair and unshaved
faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they
are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which
they move," Weizenbaum wrote. "[Computer bums] exist,
at least when so engaged, only through and for the computers."See Joseph
Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason:
From Judgment to Calculation (W. H. Freeman, 1976): 116.
Almost a quarter century after its publication,
Stallman still bristles when hearing Weizenbaum's
"computer bum" description, discussing it in the
present tense as if Weizenbaum himself was still in the
room. "He wants people to be just professionals, doing
it for the money and wanting to get away from it and
forget about it as soon as possible," Stallman says.
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