In many ways, the core tenets listed by Levy continue
to define the culture of computer hacking. Still, the
guild-like image of the hacker community was undermined
by the overwhelmingly populist bias of the software
industry. By the early 1980s, computers were popping up
everywhere, and programmers who once would have had to
travel to top-rank institutions or businesses just to
gain access to a machine suddenly had the ability to
rub elbows with major-league hackers via the ARPAnet.
The more these programmers rubbed elbows, the more they
began to appropriate the anarchic philosophies of the
hacker culture in places like MIT. Lost within the
cultural transfer, however, was the native MIT cultural
taboo against malicious behavior. As younger
programmers began employing their computer skills to
harmful ends-creating and disseminating computer
viruses, breaking into military computer systems,
deliberately causing machines such as MIT Oz, a popular
ARPAnet gateway, to crash-the term "hacker" acquired a
punk, nihilistic edge.
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