Hacker ethic is a term for the moral values and philosophy that are common in the
hacker community. Whilst the philosophy originated at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s-60s, the term
hacker ethic is attributed to journalist
Steven Levy as described in his 1984 book titled
. The key points within this ethic are access, freedom of information, and improvement to quality of life. While some tenets of hacker ethic were described in other texts like
Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by
Ted Nelson, Levy appears to have been the first to document both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy.