Since 2007, I have taught an undergraduate class on computer hackers at New York University where I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication. But once one confronts hacking empirically, some similarities melt into a sea of differences some of these distinctions are subtle, while others are profound enough to warrant thinking about hacking in terms of genres or genealogies of hacking - and we compare and contrast various of these genealogies in the class, such as free and open source software hacking and the hacker underground. Hackers tend to value a set of liberal principles: freedom, privacy, and access they tend to adore computers some gain unauthorized access to technologies, though the degree of illegality greatly varies (and much, even most of hacking, by the definition I set above, is actually legal). It doesn't mean to compromise the Pentagon, change your grades, or take down the global financial system, although it can, but that is a very narrow reality of the term. In the latest edition of our syllabus-as-essay series, Coleman guides us past the stereotypes and into the many hideouts and projects of the hacker underground.Ī "hacker" is a technologist with a love for computing and a "hack" is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means. NYU's Gabriella Coleman studies their culture, an odd brew of faith in freedom of information and traditional liberalism, along with a generous salt-and-peppering of nerdiness and counterculturalism. We have a lot of ideas about who hackers are, but very few people have actually tried to seriously investigate the anthropology of one of the more fascinating social groups to emerge at the end of the 20th century. Security magicians with odd political beliefs.
Editor's Note: Pasty kids with greasy hair typing on command lines.
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