April 7, 2010

Nameless, Freak, Phreak

Category: Academic,Phreaking — Biella @ 4:11 am

So I tend to focus on the cultural present but during grad school it was hammered into my brain that to understand the contemporary moment, history matters, a lot.. The problem with hacking and related activities is that the history is a bit sparse and fragmented. Recently I have been working on a piece that examines some of the aesthetics similarities between phrakers, underground hackers, and trollers and it sort of hit me that I had no idea when the term “phreak” or “freak” came into being.

So I dropped a note to Phil Lapsely who is writing (finally) a proper history of phreaking and he was thoughtful enough to pen down a genealogy of the term.

1 Comment »

  1. [...] Interprete » Nameless, Freak, Phreak gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=1968 – view page – cached So I tend to focus on the cultural present but during grad school it was hammered into my brain that to understand the contemporary moment, history matters, a lot.. The problem with hacking and related activities is that the history is a bit sparse and fragmented. Recently I have been working on a piece that examines some of the aesthetics similarities between phrakers, underground hackers, and… Read moreSo I tend to focus on the cultural present but during grad school it was hammered into my brain that to understand the contemporary moment, history matters, a lot.. The problem with hacking and related activities is that the history is a bit sparse and fragmented. Recently I have been working on a piece that examines some of the aesthetics similarities between phrakers, underground hackers, and trollers and it sort of hit me that I had no idea when the term “phreak” or “freak” came into being. View page Tweets about this link Topsy.Data.Twitter.User['zinosat'] = {“location”:”",”photo”:”http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/142821824/e_normal.jpg”,”name”:”Davide Viti”,”url”:”http://twitter.com/zinosat”,”nick”:”zinosat”,”description”:”",”influence”:”"}; zinosat: “Biella Coleman: Nameless, Freak, Phreak http://is.gd/biYaX ” 3 hours ago view tweet retweet Filter tweets [...]

    Pingback by Twitter Trackbacks for Interprete » Nameless, Freak, Phreak [gabriellacoleman.org] on Topsy.com — April 7, 2010 @ 3:07 pm

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