Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

open to an infinite number of possibilities.” While lifeworlds are most often experienced as free of contradiction and ambiguity (in contrast to the large-scale events and tribulations usually thought to make up the stuff of history, which I visit in the next chapter), they are invariably stamped by particular events, material conditions, and time.
    There is one event, however, which is generally experienced as startlingly unique and special—the hacker conference, which I cover in detail at the end of the chapter. The conference is culturally significant because it allowshackers to collectively enact, make visible, and subsequently celebrate many elements of their quotidian technological lifeworld. Whether it is by laying down cable, setting up a server, giving talks about technology, or hacking up some new source code, these actions at the hacker conference unfold in an emotionally charged setting. What the conference foremost allows for is a “condition of heightened intersubjectivity” (Collins 2004, 35) where copious instances of hacking are brought into being and social bonds between participants are made manifest, and thus felt acutely. Taking what is normally experienced prosaically over the course of months, hackers collectively condense their lifeworld in an environment where bodies, celebration, food, and drink exist in excess.
    Even if most of the chapter affirms Tolstoy’s maxim cited above, the hacker conference allows participants to celebrate this very quotidian life in more exceptional terms. In short, for a brief moment in time, the ordinary character of the hackers’ social world is ritually encased, engendering a profound appreciation and awareness of their labor, friendships, events, and objects that often go unnoticed due to their piecemeal, mundane nature.
    The Thousand-Mile Journey Starts with a Personal Computer
    Most F/OSS developers got their start with technology at a fairly young age, usually around seven or eight, although sometimes as young as four or five. When asked in formal interviews about when they first used computers, F/OSS developers would almost without fail volunteer the name and model number of the specific device (Atari 130xe, Radio Shack Tandy 1000 286, Apple IIe, Commodore 64, and the Sinclair Spectrum). As they spoke of these early computers that commanded so much of their youthful attention, it was unmistakable that they held a deep fondness for the anchor—the computer—that pulls hackers together as a collective.
    Many would use and eventually colonize a computer purchased by their parents. Those who came from working-class families used a school, library, or friend’s computer. Later on, some would attribute their ability to climb up the class ladder because of capacities and skills acquired through computer use—a climb that many claimed they were not intentionally seeking. Rather, the climb was a by-product of economically valuable knowledge gained by following their personal passion for computing. They wrote their first programs often by using some source code they copied from a manual or from one of the early electronic magazines, such as
Nibble
,
Popular Computing
,
Byte
, or
Dr. Dobbs
. Retrospectively, they came to understand this as their first act of sharing code. Those who started to hack in the late 1970s or 1980s did most of their learning through magazines or friends, by “memorizing” manuals they borrowed from teachers, or later on, at the workplace. 3
    Nearly all of the developers I interviewed learned some of the basics of programming, many with the computer language BASIC, by writing software for some of the first mass-marketed, relatively affordable personal computers. While some only dabbled with BASIC, others became quite proficient in it. Child programmers would often write short programs from scratch, or modify some existing piece of software to enhance its power and features. Johan explained that “by sixth grade, I had pretty much reached my peak with the Atari, writing controller software for the joysticks and trackball, using trickery like character set redefinition to make games at a higher resolution than any of its graphics mode supported.” 4 During this period, many hackers spent much of their time learning about computers by themselves, coding small bits of software mostly for fun, excitement, learning, or self-use. Some hackers alternated between coding and playing games, and they frequently coded games or traded more