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Anthropologist Spends Three Years Living With Hackers

Posted by samzenpus on from the going-native dept.

concealment writes "Coleman, an anthropologist who teaches at McGill University, spent three years studying the community that builds the Debian GNU/Linux open source operating system and hackers in the Bay Area. More recently, she's been peeling away the onion that is the Anonymous movement, a group that hacks as a means of protest — and mischief. When she moved to San Francisco, she volunteered with the Electronic Frontier Foundation — she believed, correctly, that having an eff.org address would make people more willing to talk to her — and started making the scene. She talked free software over Chinese food at the Bay Area Linux User Group's monthly meetings upstairs at San Francisco's Four Seas Restaurant. She marched with geeks demanding the release of Adobe eBooks hacker Dmitry Sklyarov. She learned the culture inside-out."

6 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Her next research project by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    will be studying the grooming habits of Orthodox Stallmanites

  2. i hope.. by fliptout · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..she was not burnt by the hot grits.

    --
    A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
  3. She??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You introduced a female into a development group? No wonder Debian didn't get anything done for the past couple of years.

  4. Re:Great by Rhinobird · · Score: 5, Funny

    smash the patriarchy

    You have to pay extra for that kind of thing.

    --
    If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
  5. Obligatry Dilbert Strip by fwarren · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-04-11/

    --
    vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.
  6. Re:Only 3 years? Are you kidding? by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    Most of those people to whom you refer aren't exactly students of human nature. This, on the other hand, is an anthropologist. You know the difference, right?

    I know people who've spent decades living by a lake and don't know as much about that lake as a marine biologist who showed up last week.

    a marine biologist specializes in oceans, a limnologist in lakes. more or less.

    ...So if you're a marine biologist you're not allowed to study lakes, or simply incapable of learning about them?

    OK, so lets get it right - an anthropologist at a hacker's meeting is like a marine bilologist who studies limnology as a hobby turning up at a lake. Why didn't you say so in the first place, the analogy is so obvious