In 1984 Steven Levy's Hackers was published, the same year that Apple launched the Macintosh. In his acclaimed book Levy charted the rise of what he termed ‘digital explorers’, the band of early techies who went on to found and run some of the biggest companies on the planet. But back then, the notion of money and success took a back seat to a culture, an esprit de corps attitude founded on taking an aesthetic and personal pleasure from the beauty of computer code and electronics, of making something better, pushing back against centralised systems and products. This was ‘hacking’. One thing was certain – hacking wasn't about the money. It was about the lone person in the bedroom improving code to make programs run quicker or more elegantly; it was about the camaraderie of a bunch of like-minded friends getting together to design and build cheap computers for the masses.

This hacker attitude is now Silicon Valley folklore – indeed, Facebook's address is 1 Hacker Way. Whatever the history, the hacker myth now serves a useful function for Big Tech in selfdeception and public reassurance, in helping persuade us that some of the biggest companies on the planet aren't the threat that they currently appear to be. How can Facebook be helping bring down democracy when it's just a company that wants to bring people together? Amazon can't be intent on being the world's biggest retailer and provider of digital services – it just allows people to buy cheap stuff. The hacker myth gives Big Tech the benefit of the doubt. Apple's own hacking myth has been built around the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, designing and building the first Apple computer in 1976 in their garage, selling their VW campervan to help fund themselves and their dream. Urban legend has it that the Apple logo represents the bite taken by the founder of the modern computer, Alan Turing, who committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple when he was persecuted and prosecuted for being homosexual. The cynical might suggest that adopting this logo plays well with Apple's liberal, creative image.

Google's foundational story echoes many of these tropes with then students Larry Page and Sergey Brin trying to crack an interesting mathematical challenge, working in Page's front room.