If you read the literature on tricksters, you will confront a string of words that capture the moral quality and sensibilities of these figures, figures scattered across time and place and largely enshrined in myths and stories:
These figures, which include Coyote, Loki, Hermes, and Eshu, among many more, push the envelope of what is morally acceptable and in so doing, argues Lewis Hyde (in his tome on the subject), renew and revitalize culture, especially the moral stuff of culture. They are not only boundary crossers, they are boundary makers. As the title of his book so succinctly and masterfully broadcasts “Trickster Makes this World.” Or as he suggests with a bit more elaboration:
“I want to argue a paradox that the myth asserts: that the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be a space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on” p. 9
At the opening of the book, Hyde asks whether there are tricksters in modern industrial societies. His answer is a plain ‘no.’ The con man who might share some similarities does not qualify. For in fact what is needed is either a polytheistic system “or lacking that, he needs at least a relationship to other powers, to people, to instructions, and traditions that can manage the odd double attitude of both insisting that boundaries be respected and recognizing that in the long run their liveliness depends on having those boundaries regularly distributed” p.13 He does locate the spirit of the trickster in spirited individuals: in Picasso, in Frederick Douglass, in laudable figures who push certain boundaries and renew our world for the better but nonetheless fall short of the archetypal trickster.
I bet it is pretty obvious where I am going with all of this given my object of study: phreakers, hackers, and trollers. The trickster does exist across America, across Europe, really across the world and it is not in myth but in embodied in group and living practice: in that of the prankster, hacker, the phreaker, the troller (all of whom, have their own unique elements of course, but so does each trickster). Their relationship to other powers are many and can be located in terms of information, intellectual property, the government, language itself, institutions of power like the FBI and AT&T. The list is not short.
For a few years now I have been thinking about the linkages between the trickster and hackers as well as the troller but it was only in the fall when I found myself trapped in a hospital for a week that I finally cracked open the book by Hyde and devoured it. Within a the first few pages, it was undeniable: there are many links to be made between the trickster and hacking. Many of these figures, push boundaries of all sorts: they upset ideas of propriety and property; they use their sharpened wits sometimes for play, sometimes for political ends; they get trapped by their cunning (which happens ALL the time with tricksters! That is how they learn); and they remake the world, technically, socially, and legally and includes software, licensing and even forms of literature (think textfile, the Jargon File or most dramatically, ED).
But if the trickster generally resides in myth, and the trickster of the information age resides in practice, myth matters everywhere because there is a mythos created around these figures. Sometimes the mythos is propagated these groups (take a look of ED for example or Phrack in the past) and of course the media has played an undeniable role. And yet, unlike what is represented in the pages of Hyde, there are living, actual bodies in motion, in conversation, in transformation, a group that goes far beyond the other more controlled and bounded tricksters we might be able to locate in society, such as artistic/political groups like the Yes Men.
But the most shocking (or hard to think through) element lies less in the many associations one can make, but in the following curious fact. For the most part the trickster is enshrined in myth and stories but the tricksters I am referring to are in fact full-bodied, full-blooded groups of people who are actually engaging in all sorts of acts of trickery. This is culture not in the sense of art and myth but people and practice and this of course makes an (ethical) difference. What happens when you are the recipient not of a story offered an elder, but the recipient of trickery, an act of pranking or trolling, for example? What happens when you can trace all sorts of instances of boundary re-shifting and remaking, as with the GPL? I think this, even more than the linkages, is what makes this connection so remarkable and I trying to think through what it means to have a figure that we can find and talk to, as opposed to one embodied in myth and story.
For now I am going to leave this post short and in the next installment, will start raising some of the connections between trickery and variants of hacking and trolling.
One remarkable thing about Ruckus was that for the first time I meet a particular kind of geek I had yet to come across: the crunchy and chewy granola/environmentalist/hippie hacker– a type of hacker that can be found world over but is likely to be (unsurprisingly) living, sometimes in the trees (literally) in the Pacific Northwest. They are one of my favorite kind of people as I can talk endlessly to them about 2 of my great passions: Free Software and environmental justice. Comfrey, pictured above, was one such hacker from Portland who I met at the Ruckus event and now routinely shows up, usually unannounced to our house at least 1-2x a year.
I woke up this morning to find him on our couch, got a bunch of knot-weed to chew on compliments of his foraging, and took the afternoon off to share some food. Among many stories, he told me of a new transportational pursuit of his, Roller-Hitching, which he uses to get around the country. He uses old school roller skates to skate along the road, even highways, until he gets picked up and get where he needs to go.
Naturally, these old school states are not just functional in the sense that they are faster than two feet in motion, but since they signify a particular spirit of the 1970s–you know, the groovy, dynamite, free love spirit of things, they draw positive attention and apparently when he roller-hitches, he gets picked up frequently (and made it from Minneapolis to Portland in 2 hours and 2 days: not shabby).
In California while on the 101 north of Arcata, California, Comfrey got stopped by the highway patrol and basically the cop wanted to kick him off on the grounds the he was a pedestrian (apparently prohibited on this patch of the 101). Comfrey, being a bright fellow, basically noted that roller skating is not really a pedestrian activity, that he was using, much a like a biker, a transportation device of sorts, so that he was in a grey zone between bikes and walking.
At the time, the cop was convinced enough but did tell Comfrey to look up the law in the library cuz the next time he would give him a ticket and the next time after that throw him in jail. Comfrey has yet ’sourced’ the law but soon will. When he does, since I like to report on geeks and the law, I too will report on whether one can roller skate down or up the highway for those that might want to give Roller-Hitching a try.
So when I teach my Introduction to Human Communication and Culture class, we usually do a section on humor and among other articles, I assign a chapter from one of my favorite books, On Humour. It is a nice, quick read delivering however some serious philosophical punch.
Given the pervasiveness of humor on the Internets I also ask students to send me what they think are 2 of the funniest videos. I then compile the list, send out to the class, and they vote on the 2 funniest ones. Here is the list and in a week I will report back on the winners, at least ‘winners’ from the perspective of NYU freshmen:
A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fVDGu82FeQ
B) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqD2aBrqcmQ&feature=related
C) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gIpuIVE3k
D) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-do8lSJOts
E) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM4eIBs8WBw
F) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3sX30NubTs
G )http://www.sickanimation.com/cartoon.asp?name=murshaq
So I love biting irony as a way to make A Point and one of my favorite essays in this regard is If Men Could Menstruate. For a while now, I have been waiting for some biting irony, really mockery, to be launched at the free wheeling Internet punditry that is so common today…. Well, here is one amazing video morsel directed at the social media guru (pictured below). Since the social media guru is just one class of Internet pundit, I hope more mockery will follow.
When I fly, I often do so with Continental Airlines because 1) I tend to like their international flights 2) they have many flights at convenient times to San Juan, PR where I head to around 4-6 times a year.
Like most airlines, their food is nothing to be desired but their gluten free option is about some of the worst food I have ever tasted. The chicken is cooked to death but otherwise entirely buck naked. Like there is nothing on it, they throw some rice in the container, and sometimes (and only sometimes) a packet of Mrs. Dash. The best part of the meal, is a coconut macaroon. After about five years of this meal (usually putting it to the side but sometimes forgetting my food and suffering from hunger) I decided it was high time to take action; I could no longer confront the bleak reality of nude rubbery chicken. So I wrote them letter.
I kept it brief and knew boring would not advance My Cause, so I just decided to add some rhetorical flourish and, naturally who else came to mind than the grand master of rhetorical flourish, Mr. T. After providing the basics, like describing the truly offensive nature of nude and rubbery chicken, I drove the nail deep into wood by stating : ‘I pity the fool’ that has has to survive through their gluten free meal and that naked chicken sucked more than the word “suck” could ever really convey (though I did duly note my appreciation for the gluten free option and that I generally liked their service).
After sending off the letter I forgot about it almost immediately nor did I fly with them again for many months (not because I boycotting, I just found cheaper flights). I recently flew to Puerto Rico and lo and behold have found the gluten free option has taken a drastic turn … for the better. In fact, not only was the chicken no longer naked it was… in fact, fully clothed, blackened chicken, spiced to no end. And the cherry on top was a gluten free blueberry muffin and some nice fruit. Go Continental.
I will never know if my letter touched the soul of some Continental office employee, working in some nameless faceless, practically windowless office park, one whose life of labor is a bit like that gluten free chicken that I so despised, rubbery and naked, in other words with no flavour or spice. But I will forever think that a dash of spice, that with the aid of the badassery that is Mr. T, one can lightly kick corporate ass to take action.
We found this bus at South Street Seaport on Sunday. Someone thought I was photo shopped in but I was really there, lampshade and all. Someone should tell the bus owner that he/she needs to replace the image with something less Amish-like/Chinese-ice-skater and more fitting.
Over the years it has been interesting to see the ethical ping pong between Ubuntu and Debian. Most recently a new issue has bubbled up having to do with the timing of the Debian release and the extent to which it was going to align with its cousin (as I like to think of Ubuntu). Mr Shuttleworth has finally emerged from his silence and penned down some thoughts, which I found pretty thoughtful.
I wish I could write about the debate in my book but I am already way over the word count (not a surprise).There are many many fascinating things about this multi-year debate but the one I find particularly interesting has to do with unwritten codes of conduct. The terms of the GPL allow Mr Shuttleworth to take Debian code and not do anything in return. Informal etiquette, of course speaks differently, mandating that if you take, you should make a reasonable effort to give back. Over the years, Debian and Ubuntu have been learning just how to manage this relationship and of course key players who have a foot in both projects, have had a hand in making this more of a reality.
While the content of this email won’t make it into the book, I do think that one particular line will and it is the line where where Mark actually apologizes for not being witty!
“Apologies in advance if this mail is lengthy and not particularly witty!”
One of my chapters is on wit, humor, and pleasure unearthing the ways you can read both the formal and poetic properties of hacking through humor and wit. When I started my research, one of the most surprising things was the sheer abundance of humor in the hacker habitat, which I describe in the following terms:
In the middle of some complicated technical discussion at a conference or over dinner, hackers will freely pepper their conversation with a series of clever quips. While joking is a very common convention used by speakers during public talks to break the proverbial ice (at least in the American context), during a hacker conference it is not simply speakers who joke; audience members will not hesitate to interrupt the speaker for the sake of humor, an occurrence that I have come to believe never offends and is actually expected and celebrated. In other words, humor is much more prevalent in their social sphere than most other vocational groups, with perhaps the exception of comedians.
As such, after mere weeks of fieldwork, it became undeniably apparent to me that humor is the privileged medium by which hackers express their cultural affection for cleverness and pleasure and became a way for me to take hold of the affective stance of pleasure, which is otherwise so difficult to capture analytically. Humor, to put it simply, is pleasure and play made socially material/tangible. Further, since hacker humor is also so often about technical matters, it works as the cultural glue that binds hackers together in a social collective…
Though a very small and passing detail, Mark’s apology, nonetheless signals the important of wit and hopefully I can find a seamless way to integrate it into the book, even if I can’t address the larger issues raised in the email, which again, are pretty interesting and deserve more attention.
One of the most distinctive things about Puerto Rico is its national frog: the coqui. Though tiny, its chirp is loud (visitors without a/c say “effing” deafening).
Last week I found one frozen and thus dead in my freezer, which was a little bit of a shock to see and a surprise as I don’t know how it leaped up there. It must have been that hot.. (and it has been so hot that it can make even the most calm animals crazy). But anyway, I went on a bit of a google rampage to learn more about the frog and found this great site about its life and travails in Hawaii.
You see, somehow someone trucked a few frogs over and now they are taking over and apparently Hawaiians, for the most part, are far from pleased. This website offers a strong defense of the frog and notes how they are “are victims of calculated character defamation..” My response: long live the coqui and protect him and her against pollution, freezers, and especially defamation.
