Hmm not sure what to say except some random thoughts: like Nathan is a great writer (he managed to captured a lot in a short piece) and it is weird to have been catapulted in the limelight due to Anonymous, something I need to write about in my new book.
I do find the explosion of hacker/geek politics rather interesting, hard to keep up with and wonder how long I can study this arena. It requires a lot of squinting and following trends as they happen is exhausting as well. Biella On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > Interesting piece on Aaron Swartz, and on Biella. Biella, want to say more? > > Udhay > > https://chronicle.com/article/Hacking-the-World/138163/ > > April 1, 2013 > Hacking the World > An anthropologist in the midst of a geek insurgency > > By Nathan Schneider > Hacking the World > > To hold an event in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City is > to lay claim on history. The typical invocation at the start of an > evening there, whatever the occasion, includes recounting that Abraham > Lincoln once made an important speech in the same room. And such was the > opening ritual on January 19. > > Hundreds of eminent geeks, start-up-ers, reporters, radicals, and > admirers gathered that evening among the stone arches and white columns > to remember the life of Aaron Swartz. At the age of 26, after living > under the threats of federal prosecutors trying to pressure him into a > plea bargain, he had hanged himself. Several times in January, his name > was on the front page of The New York Times. His former girlfriend, the > Wired writer Quinn Norton, observed in her remarks that "Aaron has left > us and entered the realm of mythmaking." David Segal, who with Swartz > founded the organization Demand Progress, said from the stage of the > Great Hall, "He wanted to hack the whole world, in the best way." > > The forces that seem to have hastened Swartz's death were very much > haunting the room. In the audience was a mischievous, greasy-haired > hacker known as "weev," who faces as much as a decade in prison for > embarrassing AT&T by publicizing a flaw in its system that compromised > users' privacy. A member of Occupy Wall Street's press team handed out > slips of paper about the case of Jeremy Hammond, an anarchist and > Anonymous member who was in prison awaiting trial for breaking into the > servers of the security company Stratfor. There was Stanley Cohen, a > civil-rights lawyer representing some of Hammond's fellow Anons, and > there was a T-shirt with the face of Bradley Manning, the soldier > charged with passing classified material to WikiLeaks. > > Just behind weev sat Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist, occasionally > jotting notes in a notepad. She teaches at McGill University. Coleman > first met Aaron Swartz when he was just 14, and over the years she had > come to know many others in the room as well. Even more of them were > among her 17,500-strong Twitter following or had seen her TED talk about > Anonymous. Part participant and part observer, she began fieldwork on a > curious computer subculture while still in graduate school. Now, more > than a decade later, her work has made her the leading interpreter of a > digital insurgency. > Hacking the World > > Onstage, speakers recounted Swartz's exploits in acronyms: As a > teenager, he co-created the RSS specification and Reddit and Creative > Commons, and in 2012 he helped organize the widespread and successful > opposition to the Congressional intellectual-property bills SOPA and > PIPA. His conviction that information wants to be free was what led him > to liberate scholarly articles from behind JSTOR's paywall en masse. > That brought on the prosecutors determined to make an example of him, > whose reaction in turn reveals just how dangerous the geek crusaders' > cry of freedom has come to seem. > > Swartz's crusade has been much celebrated since his death, if not very > well understood by those not also taking part. It's a peculiar kind of > politics. Why would someone care so much, and take such risks, to set > information free? That question, in certain respects, is what Gabriella > Coleman has spent her career studying. > > Coleman started to care about open-source software because she cared > about something else. At Columbia University in the early 90s, a friend > of hers wouldn't stop talking about a CD-ROM he'd brought home of > Slackware, an early Linux-based operating system. She didn't see what > the big deal was, so the friend explained it to her this way: He knew > she was interested in drug patents—in particular, how > intellectual-property laws prevent medicine from being available to > people who need it but can't pay inflated prices. This kind of software > was the opposite. Not only was it free of cost, but the license ensured > that the source code behind it was freely available for people to copy, > modify, and share. Computer companies were making billions by > controlling proprietary operating systems, yet here was one anyone could > use for nothing—anyone, at least, willing to put in the effort to make > it work. > > "I was just floored," Coleman recalls. "It wasn't a pipe dream. It was a > reality, and that was exciting to me: an actually existing alternative > in place." > > She went on to study anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her goal > was to write a dissertation on spiritual healing in Guyana. But the > notion of free software was still on her mind, and the community that > produced it started to interest her more and more. What just about > settled it, though, was an illness during graduate school that kept her > homebound for a year. She couldn't take classes or go on trips to > Guyana, but she could get on the Internet. Through chat rooms and online > bulletin boards, she learned a lot about free software. Soon after, and > despite her advisers' hesitation, she was ready to put aside her plan > for more-traditional fieldwork and take up this one. > > Faye Ginsburg, an anthropologist and director of New York University's > Center for Media, Culture and History, where Coleman taught in the late > 2000s, says, "I think she was a bit ahead of the curve, in terms of the > field recognizing the significance of media generally and digital media > in particular." > > For dissertation research, as others in her cohort shipped off for > more-exotic, farther-flung places, Coleman moved to the San Francisco > Bay Area with Linux running on her computer. "It was painful at first," > she says, remembering the buggy early versions of the operating system. > "It was the equivalent of having to live with the snakes." She took > classes in copyright law and system administration while making her way > into communities of geeks and hackers, as she refers to them, and as > they refer to themselves. She volunteered at the Electronic Frontier > Foundation and infiltrated the ranks of those creating the Linux-based > operating system Debian. In that male-dominated world, she suspects that > her gender helped: "This little, tiny woman shows up, and they're just > in awe that someone cares." > > At the time, in the early 2000s, Silicon Valley was infatuated with the > idea of free and open-source software; futurists promised an overnight > revolution, and venture capitalists schemed about how to turn the wisdom > of crowds into profits. Coleman's scholarship on the phenomenon, newly > compiled in her Princeton University Press book Coding Freedom: The > Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, stands well beyond either brand of > enthusiasm. Her tone is mostly sober, even as she pays close attention > to her subjects' jokes—about the cluelessness of "(l)users, or a program > called Mutt that has fleas instead of bugs." What impresses her most, > however, is what she learned from the geeks about doing politics. > > The first chapter of Coding Freedom opens with a gloss on the > prototypical autobiography of a free-software hacker. (It always bears > repeating that "hacker" does not necessarily mean someone who hacks > illegally or nefariously.) That story begins with tinkering, with taking > apart household appliances as a child and quickly graduating to whatever > primitive computing machines become available. At last the > hacker—usually a he—comes across the world of free software, which is > actually just a name for what he'd been pining after all along: infinite > tinkering with like-minded people and no external constraints. Through > chat rooms and e-mail lists and conferences, he finds a community of > others like him, and, even as they find lucrative jobs in the tech > sector, their real passion is collaborating on projects that are free > and open from the ground up. The programs really work, too. Over the > years, they wind up running a good chunk of the Internet's back end. > > Then, one day, some company or some law comes around and tries to stop > the whole show in order to protect an antiquated business model. That > makes our hacker angry. In defense of his work flow and his tinkering, > he finds himself in a political movement. > > Coleman herself has activist instincts, and she expected to find them > among the free-software hackers. (While doing her fieldwork, she > participated in Indymedia, disseminating news about the > counter-globalization protests of the period.) What she found instead > was a group of people who were engaged in the grueling legal battles and > organizational infighting that would be familiar to any activist, but > were here put to the service of mainly technical ends. > > The community as a whole, she says, "was having this political impact, > but individuals weren't necessarily politically motivated." > > The Debian Project is among the more ideological of open-source > organizations, yet its several thousand volunteer "maintainers" are held > together not so much by revolutionary spirit as by a carefully > constructed, overlapping consensus about how to create "the universal > operating system." Debian has its own "Social Contract," "Constitution," > and "Free Software Guidelines," which serve to coordinate a vast spread > of subprojects. Officers are elected according to criteria posited by an > 18th-century French mathematician. Coding Freedom chronicles the > intensive training process that Debian maintainers must undergo to enter > the community. Their programming chops are evaluated, of course, but so > is their fluency in the legal and ethical jargon of free software. > > This legal curriculum is something that geeks and hackers had to learn > themselves, and in many cases invent, just to keep doing what they > wanted to do. Over time, scholars like Lawrence Lessig realized that > they had a point and helped develop legal tools to protect "free > culture"—tools that cover everything from the Firefox browser's source > code to the Creative Commons license on Coleman's book. (It was > downloaded around 20,000 times in its first week of being freely > available online.) For a hacker, she points out, law is code; legal > reform is just another hack. > > Like any countervailing subculture, the hacker community also depends on > fostering environments where, as Coleman puts it, "a different set of > lived ethics can incarnate into practice." In the solitary ecstasy of > coding they remind her of the 19th-century Romantics. No less ecstatic > are the hacker conferences, where online collaborators get to meet, > drink excessively, and write software together in the same room. Just as > vital are the rules that pervade such spaces, both formal and informal, > which seek a balance of individual autonomy and group consensus-seeking. > And the impact of these communities has been felt far beyond their geeky > membership. > > That impact was especially visible on January 18, 2012, when signs of > protest appeared across large swaths of the Internet, including Google, > Wikipedia, and Twitter, to protest the proposed bills then in Congress > that stood to radically bolster copyright law, mainly on behalf of the > entertainment industry. Aaron Swartz and the many thousands of other > hackers who rallied against the bills were acting on behalf of ideals > that they had learned to cherish in practice, through their means of > collective production. > > Some hackers, it's true, happen to be anticorporate activists. And the > open-source pioneer Eric S. Raymond—"the hacker culture's resident > ethnographer since around 1990," as he puts it—takes Coleman to task for > not saying more about the libertarian rationale often held among those > of his ilk, which would object to copyright law as an affront to the > free market. In the end, though, hackers' varying justifications matter > less than what they actually do together. They became a force in > mainstream politics through the back door because there was no choice; > to the extent that file sharing, copying, and remixing aren't allowed, > free software cannot operate. > > This is the insight that Coleman wants to bring to her fellow > anthropologists in Coding Freedom: While liberal values like > transparency, autonomy, and free inquiry may be cherished by many people > in the abstract, the geeks who have fought for those values most > assiduously on our behalf learned to care so much about them through > practice, by what those values enabled them to produce. And when hackers > are able solve technical problems by setting information free, they > start to imagine what other kinds of problems they might be able to fix. > > By the fall of 2011, while Coleman was knee-deep in her work on > Anonymous and other political outgrowths of geek culture, a student of > hers named Leah Feder was about to encounter open-source ideals in the > streets. > > Occupy Wall Street began in the last weeks of September, and Feder > started going down to occupied Zuccotti Park, in Manhattan, soon > afterward. She was excited by it but at first didn't know how to plug > in. That's where she met Devin Balkind, also in his mid-20s. Before the > movement started, he had incorporated an organization called Sarapis to > help nonprofits benefit from open-source software and other peer-to-peer > methodologies. Balkind is a wild-eyed true believer who talks about a > "sea change" and a "knowledge revolution" to come—soon, like in six months. > > Feder dropped out of NYU, and together they devoted themselves to > introducing the movement not just to open-source software but also to > other forms of free culture, like collaborative permaculture farming and > digital currencies. They were less interested in how Occupy could > protest than in what alternatives it could produce. > > The Occupy movement's affinity with free culture expressed itself right > from the start; Occupy Wall Street's initial "Principles of Solidarity" > statement called for "wide application of open source." Open-source > organizing models also fit well with the movement's nonhierarchical and > directly democratic proclivities. People with backgrounds in free > software tended to have had more experience working in structures like > that, and they became involved in Occupy encampments across the country. > They also went to work building a digital infrastructure to unite the > disparate movement. > > This infrastructure, much of it assembled in the months after the media > had deemed Occupy over and done, was tested when Hurricane Sandy struck > the Eastern Seaboard last October. Within days, a band of Occupy Wall > Street veterans and their allies had mounted a relief effort that > mobilized thousands of volunteers to help in communities where the > government response was far from adequate. The effort started with an > online platform that could direct people and supplies to sites where > they were needed. Soon, Feder and Balkind helped set up a largely > open-source system for managing resources and volunteers. "With Sandy we > already did it," Balkind says. "We had a better system up within a month." > > As Occupy's most devoted participants have always believed, it is just > one part of a network of interrelated movements. Much is made of the > role of corporate social media like Facebook and Twitter on the recent > protest scene, including Cairo's Tahrir Square and Canada's #IdleNoMore > indigenous uprising, but less noticed is the commitment to free and open > information underlying so many of these movements. The narrow frame of > geek politics has found itself in much more mixed company. > > "There is a meta-relationship," says Coleman. "These movements enacted a > shared set of values in their organizing." > > Some quarters of the encampment movement in Spain, for instance, have > embraced talk of "the commons," and a "European Charter of the Commons" > has been drafted in Italy. Harking back to the pre-industrial > arrangement of villagers' holding farmland in common, and inspired by > the free-software phenomenon, these people envision freeing more of > society's vital resources from private control to be shared among those > who depend on them. > > Luis Moreno-Caballud, who teaches in the Hispanic-studies program at the > University of Pennsylvania, was closely involved in the movements in > both Madrid and New York. He has been tracing a "return of the > commons"—a tendency, he explains, "not to see our dependency on others > as a weakness, or a lack, but a potential." This impulse was able to > manifest itself especially easily in software over the past few decades; > it was a new realm where the rules hadn't been made yet. But in the > protest movements, Moreno-Caballud has noticed similar commons emerging > as people self-organize to resist their governments' austerity policies. > > "The state is abandoning people," he says. "We need to reclaim what is > ours." > > In the years since the fieldwork that led to Coding Freedom, Gabriella > Coleman has found herself playing a new kind of role: that of the > world's foremost scholar of Anonymous. > > "Studying Debian was a pure joy," she says. "It was a safe playground. > And then all of a sudden I went to what felt like a nightmare > playground, where there were spikes and booby traps and grenades." While > before she had only to be careful to keep her Linux operating system > from crashing, now she has to make sure not to collect data that could > be used in investigations by law enforcement—not learning where subjects > live, for example, and leaving chat rooms if discussions of illegal > activity begin. > > "I've definitely had to create boundaries," she says. > > Coleman discovered Anonymous while investigating, as a side project, the > particular disdain that a number of geeks she'd interviewed over the > years had for the Church of Scientology. She started to realize that > Scientology is "this perfect inversion" of the hacker ethos. It is > secretive, litigious, dogmatic, and freely blends its dogma with > technology in ritual gizmos like the "E-meter." This was on her mind > when something called "Project Chanology" appeared in early 2008: People > in matching masks, calling themselves Anonymous, started protesting at > Scientology centers around the world. > > Among these crowds, Coleman says, the cause of information liberation > took on "a distinct modality." Some Anons were skilled coders from the > free-software community, but many didn't have technical backgrounds. > They were drawn to the cause by a culture and an aesthetic. > > Anonymous is part prank but also part activism; it led to a lot more of > both. Within a couple of years, Anonymous was fighting big banks on > behalf of WikiLeaks—the information-freedom spree of the hacker Julian > Assange—and bringing down dictators' Web sites during the Arab Spring. > It played key roles in the Occupy movement. Corporations and governments > alike had their security breached by this amorphous and often reckless > band of information liberators. All along, Coleman turned her > ethnographic attention to online chat channels and Twitter hashtags that > Anonymous members frequented, and she met with leading Anons. Outlets > including CNN, the Guardian, Wired, and Boing Boing use her has a > source, and her insights on how Anonymous functions have made the > phenomenon a little less mysterious. Anonymous will be the subject of > her next book. > > The success that Anonymous and WikiLeaks have had in spooking the > powerful is surely part of what motivated the scare tactics used against > Aaron Swartz. Such tactics won't necessarily work. Over the course of > the memorial for Swartz in New York, the remembrances swelled into calls > for action, and then standing ovations—against the power of corporations > in the legal system, against the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, > against mass incarceration. One cause led to another. The hackers were > connecting the dots. > > "If people experience a taste of what political action is," Coleman said > afterward, "whether it's the power of consensus, whether it's the power > to change something, whether it's the power of getting media > attention—they're hooked." > > Nathan Schneider is the author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes From the > Occupy Apocalypse and God in Proof: The Story of a Search From the > Ancients to the Internet, both forthcoming from the University of > California Press in 2013. > > Copyright 2013. All rights reserved. > > The Chronicle of Higher Education > 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W. > Washington, D.C. 20037 > > > -- > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > >
