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Anthropologist Spends Three Years Living With Hackers
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."
That's awesome. Welcome to the internet. Guess Coleman will talk about how he discovered Reddit in his next article!
will be studying the grooming habits of Orthodox Stallmanites
..she was not burnt by the hot grits.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Did I just get old? Or did slashdot really gone down the toilet? Both?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Hack Like Me
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
she had to singe and destroy her olfactory nerves
thus rendered dead to the sense of smell, she was able to continue to function while embedded in the community
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You lost me at Wired. That magazine is nothing but sensationalism. Or, maybe I should say SHE lost me at Wired, not you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sure, it's a fluff piece.
The author is trying to sell some books.
There's nothing wrong with that. If you're part of the culture, I'm sure it seems like a waste of time.
I don't see a problem with trying to raise awareness of the community, and maybe correct some flawed stereotypes. I don't see why the community wouldn't want their story told.
According to the general comments with the article, the book has a creative commons license. The author commented that she will release a copy soon, when she fixes the website to go with it.
Maybe you should have actually, ya know, read some things. The book is being released under Creative Commons and she's putting up a site to distribute it. But since you just want mod points for being a smartass...carry on
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
I disagree ... there's also Apple advertising.
You introduced a female into a development group? No wonder Debian didn't get anything done for the past couple of years.
TL;DR - she's writing a book and wants us all to know, and Wired is cooperating. It's a fluff piece. Apparently we should buy it when it comes out.
As the sibling posts also say, you wrote a really bad summary. I think you just wanted to be cynical, or troll.
Aside from the fact that she'll apparently release the book copyleft, there's also the fact that it's a scholarly work - a good way to lose money.
A better summary would be something like "Anthropologist studies nerds, finds that they have an interesting culture and a clear interest in civil liberties issues."
But of course that isn't relevant to Slashdot. There are no nerds here, and no one cares about civil liberties here, right? We just discuss computer parts endlessly, right? I hope some smarter moderators show up soon.
"Hackers in the Mist"
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
TL;DR - she's writing a book and wants us all to know, and Wired is cooperating. It's a fluff piece. Apparently we should buy it when it comes out.
As the sibling posts also say, you wrote a really bad summary. I think you just wanted to be cynical, or troll.
Aside from the fact that she'll apparently release the book copyleft, there's also the fact that it's a scholarly work - a good way to lose money.
A better summary would be something like "Anthropologist studies nerds, finds that they have an interesting culture and a clear interest in civil liberties issues."
But of course that isn't relevant to Slashdot. There are no nerds here, and no one cares about civil liberties here, right? We just discuss computer parts endlessly, right? I hope some smarter moderators show up soon.
I just want to thank you for your post, sadly have no mod points to give
Day 1. OMFG, the smell.
Day 2. I don't know how long I can live on Doritos and Mountain Dew.
Day 3. I think I've made contact, they keep saying Boobs or GTFO.
Year 3. I'm done, going to the spa.
Season veterans who have spent literally * DECADES completely immersed in the hacker scene still dare not make any sweeping declaration about the nature of the hacker world.
And here we have, a person who only spent 3 fricking years (as she put it "researching") comes out with her "immense knowledge" of the hacker subculture.
My own experience told me that, while hackers in general do share "common traits", hackers from one community differ from hackers from another community, in term of way of thought, habits, etc.
The term "community" means a lot as well - as the word not only define geographic difference, but also the different fields (shared interests) the hackers are working on.
I still remember when the movie scene started to take interest in hackerism they had actors playing stereotypical thick-glassed, talkative, soprano-toned hackers, and they all come with lousy hairdo - As if we are like that.
I've known some of the greatest hackers and from the outside they look normal - just fucking absolutely normal.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Why didn't Wired ask her how she paid to live for 3 years in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Seriously, I'd like to know.
None of the guidebooks I've ever read say anything about how getting an eff.org email address is a substitute for avg. $2K@month in rent. (Highest in the USA.)
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-04-11/
vi +
So a groupie is now called an anthropologist.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I could easily be tricked into having her stay with me for weeks. I just don't know if she'd get along with my mom.
The G
I think the comments here show something clearly:
While some antropologists may be interested in understanding hacker culture, the interest is not reciprocal.
See, how can someone who can't even get an HTML unordered list correct contradict an anthropologist?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
as phantomfive already said: sensationalism
Yeah, you deserve a ton of mod points. I despise how people on Slashdot look down at anybody who's not in 'the club', whatever they might imagine the club to be. Jon Katz was fuzzy headed, but didn't deserve the reception he got here at all. And neither does this anthropologist.
I really wonder why people are so xenophobic.
I think in this case, people are resistant to the notion that they can be so neatly studied and classified.
The term "anthropologist" and its modern context and funding in the USA can be very interesting.
Terms like "Human Terrain program" should offer some counterinsurgency warfare insight vs the projected "global humanitarians".
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/the-us-militarys-quest-to-weaponize-culture
The "deep hanging out" "earning their trust" "getting them to tell us about their worlds" are the classic opening moves.
David Price has a good book on this called Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in the Service of the Militarized State that might help.
What was once seen as college hacking, computer games, a better door lock, old movie quotes, 6 years of French and an interest in Lua, a better wheelchair interface, faster servers, community wifi, crypto is now seen by many in the US military as a new front on an internal political battlefield, - great for funding, contractors and advancement.
First you get the funding for understanding. After understanding comes influtration.
Another aspect to understanding is for internal testing. You do not want your next young crypto expert back home or in the field to ever have doubts no matter the material they are exposed to.
You want to keep your geeks happy and enjoying a living wage. Cash or an understanding of humanity from foreign embassies might fill the void in their lives wrt contractors pay or one too many night raids.
It took some time for the UK and US to understand their staff and just how and why they got turned.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I don't mind so much about the decline in the participation standards, if there has in fact been a decline (not counting the glory days when the lamers had five digit ids).
What I tremendously resents is the decline in the wording of the story summaries, which become ever more useless and trollish by the minute. It's not the people here that will drive me away. It's the decline in story summaries and the attitude of the editorial oversight which permits this to happen.
If we had a moderation system to assign "vague-assed trollery" to the story submissions, I would instantly tweak my filter such that I never see these stories again (and the 300 comments out of 500 adjusting the crookered picture frame).
The only reason I haven't jumped ship already is that most of the alternatives have been violently Twitterized. I'm determined to think in full paragraphs. I just can't wait for the headline "Generation Z rediscovers the paragraph." Maybe if I'm lucky--and live long enough to see it--the paragraph will become retro cool.
I really wonder why people are so xenophobic.
It is not everyone on slashdot. It is just the fourteen year olds among us.
Some of them have been practicing at being fourteen for a decade or more. They are particularly obnoxious.
I look forward to Coleman's book. She may offer some insight into this failure to mature syndrome. I have a suspicion that it has something to do with over exposure to FPS games, but I'm just guessing.
Will
My god, there are a lot of smug/reactive, insular and almost anti-intellectual neckbeards on this thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participant_observation
I think in this case, people are resistant to the notion that they can be so neatly studied and classified.
Perhaps you're right. Though really, no group of humans is and anthropologists are well aware of this fact. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
She uses 'I was like', 'they were like' an awful lot. That, to me, is not the sign of an intelligent person.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Hello,
This seems similar in nature to the work Dr. Sarah Gordon did while speaking with and investigating computer virus writers back in the 1990s. Unlike Coleman, though, Gordon seems to have focused more on criminal hackers. Very interesting reading.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
*THIS* exactly.
As several anthropology professors told me, there are really only two kinds of jobs left in anthropology, teaching and working for the CIA. When an anthropologist starts studying your community, you know you are in for some deep shit! She's clearly a fuckin' spook!
Well, maybe, except that the second sentence in the article states she's the OTHER kind of anthropologist that you mentioned.
"Coleman, an anthropologist who teaches at McGill University"
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Zero Cool? Acid Burn? Cereal Killer?
Maybe she got to hack The Gibson.
Spending three years, and from a real anthropologist, means she actually knows *more* about the hackers than any individual one in the group.
Anyone insulting here only shows ignorance of what her profession is*.
She may be a poor writer after that (I didn't read her work), she may be stupid, she may not vote my side, she may believe hideous things -but definitely: part of her job, after three years of full-time work, she just knows more than you and me. And than any single individual here not having devoted *years* professionally to the topic.
H.
(*) Sorry Cowboy, you can foe me now -- you also can check you're part of my friends, for years...
Herve S.
O hai!
I'd just like to take a minute to point out that you are both arrogant and clueless. You seem to believe that your generation has some sort of richer or better culture, or perhaps a deeper wisdom. Youth is often arrogant and derisive of what they have not experienced. What's your excuse?
You have constructed a bias in thought without input from reality. Your generation was decried by the previous one just the same -- the tradition is at least as old as Socrates. Aside from the general principle that ninety percent of everything is 'crud', your complaint is mostly one of ignorance. You don't seek out counterexamples, or involve yourself with the creative minds of the younger generations. For my part I am rather pleasantly astounded at the number of young people that I meet who have actually read The Brothers Karamazov, although meeting an equal number who have read Finnegan's Wake fails to elicit the same emotions.
Overall, this may be a generation that is unused to theatre -- but expects at least 20 hours of plot from video games. They may have a preference for netspeak -- but they interact with each other on a global scale. They may not write sonnets -- but only because you can't use a 3D printer to make them. They may not share your musical tastes -- and for that they should truly be damned, because everyone knows that good music hasn't been made since whichever formative decade you experienced.
I would label this as a case of projection: you are a small-minded person with limited knowledge outside your own domain, and assume that this is true of everyone else.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.