What does an anthropologist do when she has worked all day on thinking and writing about hackers, technology, and such to unwind? Watch a movie aboout hackers, of course! Last night I watched Freedom Downtime basically
crafted by and starring Mr 2600,
Emmanul
Goldstein (aka Eric Corely). He is one of the “big men” of hacking like Stallman and John Gillmore who have come to define the ethical stuff and meaning of what hacking is all about. (One of these days I am going to write an article about what hacking is through the vantage point of these this holy trinity). Emmanuel, I think is one of the most interesting cultural figures and activists of current times using hackish means to activize, to politicize. He is the master mind behind one of the most electrifying hacker cons HOPE the 5th one being held this summer in NYC. I who am already somewhat politically minded was swept by the tide of energy at this conference. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep at the time and the hecticness of NYC but that is part of the draw. Time stops to consider the ordinary temporal and spatial quality of life which badly needs to be stopped to precisely reflect on those times and spaces.

Anyway, I am veering away from the movie. So though Goldstein really could have used a better editor (there was a surplus of scenes that are really only of interest to those filming the movie), there was also a surplus of vastly interesting material to think with.

The movie was primarily about the rise of the Free Kevin Campaign which is as much about why Kevin should have never been jailed (or at least should have receivd a fair trial), how the media and court system are dually based on the false premise of conveying truth, and one of the most interesting was how hard it is to access corporate “peoples” to get information. Media, courts, and corporations were triangulated as sites of information fudging. And it is thick fudge.

Unlike Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine who is sufficeintly famous to access high level officials in Lockhead, Kmart, and actors like Mr. Heston, most of us have so very little access to the innards of corporate offices and peoples that it is quite astounding. They have a protective sheath around them especially any located in a corporate park which is not so easily physically accessible. If you would want to protest on site, it would be illegal to enter, so you would, you know, have to protest onsome isolated highway in San Jose where like no one would see you. Not all that effective.

Anyway, Goldstein and his crew who rented a car with unlimited milesdrove all over the US to try to talk to some corporate officials in places like Novell and Sun. They were fortresses and it was basically useless to try to break in.

The great irony of it all was that it demonstrated that for these hackers it was easier to break into the corporate palace via the computer that to do so through legal channels. Access Denied. Heh.

So last night I had probably one of the strangest dreams that I have had in a long time. Sadly I don’t remember the contents but I do know that I had a visceral nightmare (you know, my heart was pounding when I woke up) about “free speech.” Ok, I know that sounds preposterous but I had an honest to god nightmare about some aspect of free speech. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I am reading critical theories of liberalism such as Marcuse (Repressive Tolerance), Fish (There is No Such Thing as Free Speech) and Brown (States of Injury) as I deal with the question of free software and freedom. But a nightmare about it??

Clearly I need some distance from my school work or some of the old malaria medicine, Lariam, that I took years ago is leehing out of my system wacking out my already wacked dreams.

This weekend I wrote my AAA paper for the American Anthropological Association conference meeting that will be held here in Chicago in the middle of November. In six pages I gave an overview of my whole vision of how the politics of Free and Open Source Software are enacted and how connect with a tradition of free speech liberalism in the American sphere. It is a lot to wrtie in 6 pages but I decided to go that route as opposed to one-argument-really-fleshed-out-well-in-6-pages-route. I want to see whether I can write my vision in 6 pages and anyway, writing it out in 6 pages is helping me think of what I need to say in 2 of my dissertation chapters which is on that subject. As we get close to the AAA I will post the paper.

The paper is only 6 pages not because I am sadistic but because each presenter only has 15 minutes, which I think is a totally raw deal. Such a format rewards those who are magical writers and those who are magicians of bull shit. But there is one good thing that does come out of it. You are forced to say a lot in a little, and can come up with some really tight sentences that are hopefully clear but bursting with meaning(s). I can use a bit of that because I tend to have what I call a Russian aesthetics of writing tossed in with forms of female insecurity. I like to be very obvious and beat points to the ground. While this can be good from time to time, it can also be a drag to read and I write 4 sentences for what can be said in 2. So going through these short paper writing excursions affords an opportunity to be sparse and clear and teach me techniques that will shorten my disseratation.

I almost can’t believe how much of time I spend writing these days. Emails, blogs, papers, and my dissertation. It is all consuming yet I sometimes feel so alienated by it. There is so much I want to say but putting all the pieces all together can be so hard. I never thought I would spend so much of my life writing and in front of a computer.

Nearly losing the entire contents of the recent hacking attack was also a really disturbing experience. It is hard to lose anything you create but since this also acts like my journal (I stopped jounaling when I started blogging which is not that bad of thing as I could get quite mopey in my journal), I felt I would have lost a sense of self in time. I forget my life easily. No seriously, I forget what I say, what I did, what I wrote (not as bad or as funny as what’s here name? in Saving Nemo) and so traces are important to me.

It made me think a lot about digital storage. I like the fact that I have hard copies of my journal even if a fire can burn them to oblivion (though I do have a digital copy too) but until this episode I never really had much anxiety over the fact that all my stuff is on some server out in Freemont California. Not only is digital stuff perhaps not seemingly tangible inscribed but it is not necessarily proximal to you. Anyway, I am glad that Micah was making backups of all my stuff, the ever mindful system administrator that he is…

Lately my life has been firmly that of being student. Sitting, reading, writing, and transcribing. No complaints especially given the fall season which is perhaps my favorite for studying. Fall weather has been in and out in Chicago although today it is unmistakably “in,” with brilliant blue skies, red creeping into already creeping green ivy, and yellow and orange tree leaves melding with the sky and scattered on the ground. One can’t but help admire the almost sick perfection and clarity of the colors, the vibrant feel of the air, and that sensibility of change which is what fall is all about.

As of late I have really appreciated things well done (that is, things that come close to sick perfection) although always, of course, measured in relation to to their genre and my enjoyability. On Friday, I read something horribly unclear, which given the fact that I had a fever at the time, left me really frustrated. It seemed like such a shame, such a waste of communicative energy. I wanted to understand what was being said but was forced for reasons out of my control into this ludicrous guessing maze, mucking through prolific assumptions and interminable paragraphs and sentences that never even gave a clear sense of argument and intention. And then perhaps I thought it was just me and sometimes it is. But then when you come across something well written, like Referential Practice by William Hanks, and, well, it feels akin to talking a walk during a fall day. He writes about cultural lingustics which is something that never came easy to me. Yet, reading his account of it made it clear in such a way that I never encountered before. You can actually enjoy the process while reading and perhaps learn something. It does not frustrate; it invigorates.

It makes me ask if struggle really should be part of reading? I do feel a little guilty blasting someone for jumbled writing and praising those who gush with clairty. The thing I fear the most about writing my dissertaton is that I know clear writing is far from a simple task. So despite my clarity of ideas and goals for my dissertation, I am afraid that my clarity will just be that, mine. And I want it to be yours. Well at least my advisors.

Writing is for me a two step process. I write in part to to self-understand my material. While I might have a pretty good and clearn working sense of what I want to say, until I put it in words, structure, paragraphs, that is in a larger whole, my understanding is still somewhat at the level of the abstract. I guess I need the vehicles of words and letters to fully concretize, to make real what is otherwise just in relation to I. But the end of writing should be so that the reader comprehends what you have come to understand. It is an I-thou relationship. And this is tricky given that you have a lot of extra material in your mind that your readers don’t. I guess in the end, the struggle should be yours. Yours so that you achieve some sort of clarity so that your readers can instead walk through the brisk day, feeling somewhat invigorated by what you say even if they don’t agree with it.

It is a beautifully warm day in Chicago. The sun is shining and the crazy orange lady bugs that seem more present than Cubs fans are flying erratically outside of my window. Thick and round they fly as if they were little alien spaceships buzzing round and round.. And yes, they sting. Despite the pull to be outdoors, today I have made progress is setting up what I will call my “dissertation environment.” Although I first balked at the idea of writing on CVS(Concurrent Versions System) which is what programmers use to produce code collaboratively (or just keep track of versions), I am convinced it is the way to go. Thanks to the help of my friend and sometime collaborator, Mako Hill (who is sort of like those lady bugs, full of quirky energy), I have learned some of the ins and outs of CVS (on past projects) and now we have a directory set up for my dissertation.

Now, I have to find the right style sheets (or I guess create them) for TeX which is a typsetting program, not unlike html or XML, that I will use to write my dissertation. Once you have it set up, it is actually quite easy to use and then with the change of a few commands you can completely change the layout. I hear this is a good guide and then there is this nice online guide. One of the things that I am learning is how to use BibTex which is the tex program for writing and formatting bibliographies. It is really snazzy, yes snazzy is the word to describe it although I have to play with it more. I am also afraid that there is no “anthro style” but I think the chicago style is close and can me modified to make it match.

So geeky, no? I mean I might as well match the content of my project (geeks) with the form of producing it (geek tools)… I remember years ago that someone told me I should write my dissertation in TeX and I laughed… Right. I was wrong.

I sometimes wonder if Darl Mcbride is not made of the same idiot cloth as that of our wonderful president. He recently made a claim that the GPL would not pass legal test. I mean, who knows given the craziness of this country but that is a bold claim… Imagine if it did not hold? That would mean my research would get MIGHTY interesting….

I am back in Chicago where well, I go to graduate school. This is the first time that I have ever moved back somewhere and it is in some ways really exciting precisely because it is going to be so boring. Boring in the sense that I will be mostly concentrating on one thing, writing, and won’t feel like I am bein pulled in many directions which is what I need right now.

It is daunting thinking about the amount of work and writing I have ahead of me but I also want to move ahead with it all. I recently wrote a small overview about the social and political importance of Free and Open Source Software, which is the topic of my dissertation, for an activist handbook for a conference in Helsinki. Now I have to convert that short piece into a large large one

The geeek writer who brought us “Why Nerds Are Unpopular, here is another good essay Hackers and Painters. As one who likes to compare and contrast to think through phenomena, I enjoyed this essay, although there are limits to his comparison as comparisons are well, of course, never a perfect match. S

o, for example, it is certainly the case that what programmers and hackers create has a strong aesthetic element (one of my main research interests). But while artists and hackers both can admire theit own work (and both prolly have deeper aesthetic understandings), computer programs have more of inner aesthetic that really only the creaters can experience from the aesthetic standpoint even if a user can think that a piece of software rocks.

Also, while I agree that hackers are not necessarily like mathematicians, his view of science as not being an “art” or being composef of makers I think is also up for debate. Science is completely oriented around making and practicality. It is just that it oriented towards forms of making that are profitable, which is what he objects to because it directs “the makers” away from creating through and by inner vision and pasion.

But if you write code, this is an interesting read whether it is how one learns, the need for empathy, and the fact that there are few institutions (and he includes the academy) that really support hacking, well except the open source project. Oh and finally, he views jobs and hacking as pretty antithetical:

“I think the answer to this problem, in the case of software, is a concept known to nearly all makers: the day job. This phrase began with musicians, who perform at night. More generally, it means that you have one kind of work you do for money, and another for love….”

I have talked to way too many hackers who have found a higher degree of satisfaction in their day job to make this comparison work although there are for sure many forms of dislike against the day job in the form of suits, ending projects, NDA’s, and in this current climate, the job market…. It will be interesting to see how the view towards day jobs among hackers will shift now that jobs are scarce and working conditions are not as fun and flexbile as before.

I am obsessed by the question of hacker ethics& politics. I have written a short piece for the Sarai Reader about what, from a socio-political perspective, shapes such strong and diverse forms of ethics for information freedom among hackers (pretty vague piece as it was published from a talk I gave). And my whole dissertation is about the peculiar nature of hacker ethics and politics and changing forms of political conscioussness amongst FOSS hackers. Here is a short and somewhat outdated overview. Now I am working with Mako on a paper that further explores the underlying legal and philisophical orientations and mechanims that give FOSS a form of extreme spreading power (internal and externall to FOSS and in the Latourian sense ) that works in part by denying its politics (more on that later).

BUT, the interesting thing is that tonight, Danny and Quinn who are full of good information on all things geekish, pointed meto a significant change made in the The Jargon File by ESRthat reflects the changing nature of hacker political affiliations at least according to some.

As reported in NTK:

“Finally (and not included in the changelogs),
Eric has tweaked the Hacker Politics page, from its previous
description as “vaguely liberal-moderate” to
“moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by
the collapse of socialism)”. Go tell that to the
Kuro5hinners, Eric. Recalling Raymond’s familiar defence of
previous changes, “rather than complaining that I am
‘rewriting history’, help me write it!”, let it be noted
that if someone did want to fork the Jargon File, now would
be the time to do it. Raymond’s previous googlejuice at
tuxedo.org has been cast to the winds. A new, reformatted
and popularly linked-to upstart could quickly seize the top
Google slot. Ha, ha, as we apparently all say, only serious.”

Although I have concentrated mostly on only FOSS hackers (and I see differences among different types of hackers in terms of ethcs, another paper coming soon), I would say that the tendency has been the complete opposite than that which ESR reports. While there are hackers of every political orientation, affiliation, and fascination, the liberal and left leaning hacker which seemed to be pretty rare pre-2000, has risen to much greater prominence in the last couple of years. I think that Raymond’s need to redefine the hacker political orientation reflects more his own anxiety (as a professed libertarian) over the trends towards widerspread liberalization (made possible in part by the likes of Lessig, O’Reilly, EFF, and participation in sites like kuro5hin and also the cynicism and “reality bites” after the dotcom crash) and to a lesser extent leftizization (thanks again to the likes of kuro5hin and greater visibility of tech activism represented by orgs like Indymedia and yes, I know leftizization is not a word but anthropologists do make up words all the time).

So now he seems to be re-writing history or at least telling his version given a certain anxiety over the diversification of political affiliations amongst hackers. At least that is my theory tonight. And it will be very interesting to see if his version will stick or whether history forking will ensue…

So looks like everything is ok so I can actually post some new material. I find it hard to keep with the blog when I can’t do it from home and the house I am staying at right now does not have net access so I have to schlep to school to use the computers. So that also explains my recent absence among other things…

But really I have been busy in Chi-town working on a paper for what was a most excellent excellent conference organized by mr. golub who did a fine fine job playing the gracious host (which is what a conference organizer really is, a meta-host of sorts.

OK, so in brief, the conference was great because it was a venue of cross-pollination, bees of every kind buzzing with great talks, words, humor, and insight. Seriously, with theologians, gamers, economists, anthropologists, cultural critics, designers, linguists, and historians you will be stung by different perspective which is key when we analyze the so called net. Being pigeonholed in any hard and fast way to one main viewpoint is, imho, analytical death or at least analytical mundaness. So if anything being at a cross disciplianary conference like this gets you out of that entropic hole.
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