The best way to promote this free exchange of information is to have an open system, something which presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that he needs in his quest for knowledge, improvement, and time on-line. The last thing you need is a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems, dangerous in that they cannot accommodate the exploratory impulse of true hackers. Bureaucrats hide behind arbitrary rules (as opposed to the logical algorithms by which machines and computer programs operate): they invoke those rules to consolidate power, and perceive the constructive impulse of hackers as a threat. The epitome of the bureaucratic world was to be found at a very large company called International Business Machines--IBM. The reason its computers were batch-processed Hulking Giants was only partially because of vacuum tube technology, The real reason was that IBM was a clumsy, hulking company which did not understand the hacking impulse. If IBM had its way (so the TMRC hackers thought), the world would be batch-processed, laid out on those annoying little punch cards, and only the most privileged of priests would be permitted to actually interact with the computer. All you had to do was look at someone in the IBM world, and note the button-down white shirt, the neatly pinned black tie, the hair carefully held in place, and the tray of punch cards in hand. You could wander into the Computation Center, where the 704, the 709, and later the 7090 were stored--the best IBM had to offer--and see the stifling orderliness, down to the roped-off areas beyond which non-authorized people could not venture. And you could compare that to the extremely informal atmosphere around the TX-0, where grungy clothes were the norm and almost anyone could wander in. Now, IBM had done and would continue to do many things to advance computing. By its sheer size and mighty influence, it had made computers a permanent part of life in America. To many people, the words IBM and computer were virtually synonymous. IBM's machines were reliable workhorses, worthy of the trust that businessmen and scientists invested in them. This was due in part to IBM's conservative approach: it would not make the most technologically advanced machines, but would rely on proven concepts and careful, aggressive marketing. As IBM's dominance of the computer field was established, the company became an empire unto itself, secretive and smug.