Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

The original hacker ethic: do it, try it, share it. Levy documents how a culture that started in an MIT model-railroad club at night turned into the way the software industry actually works — by building in the open, by tinkering, by treating computers as instruments of freedom rather than institutions of control. The book is essential to understand where Silicon Valley's ethos came from, and how many of the practices we now take for granted (open source, version control, the joy of making things work) are inherited cultural norms — not obvious engineering outcomes. A direct precedent to Raymond's bazaar.