Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

geeks have come to value free software as an avenue for self-expression or because it can secure technical independence (as they can rely on themselves to code an application just as they see fit), F/OSS is valued for providing a communal space where people with shared interests can band together to produce as they collectively see fit. When asked about the nature of this sort of collaboration, Jeremiah responded that while it is “at times frustrating and maddening,” it is “most often rewarding. You learn really quickly that there are a lot of really smart people in the project and that an idea is always, always improved after they’ve all beat on it some.”
    The effects of any public discourse are multiple and profound, as theorists of publics have long maintained (Taylor 2004; Warner 2002). On one level, the discourse of F/OSS works to represent and confirm experience(for after all, F/OSS development seems to work as well or, in some cases, better than proprietary development), but on another level, by concretizing experience into a rich and accessible format, it alters the nature of experience itself. With a set of “typifications” (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 31) over the philosophical meaning of source code in place, hackers draw on them to give meaning to their own actions, although these typifications can and do change over time.
    Public discourse is a vehicle through which hackers’ immediate experiences with technology along with their virtual and nonvirtual interactions with one another are culturally generalized. Their interactions are conceptualized in terms of expression, transparency, efficiency, and freedom. Hackers don’t solely derive meaning either through virtual interaction, though, or by making, accessing, and extending public discourse. In-person interaction is also a pervasive feature of their lifeworld, working to confirm the validity of circulating discourse. The single most important site of in-person sociality is the hacker conference, the final topic of this chapter (see figure 1.1 ).
    FIGURE 1.1. Debconf1, Bourdeaux, France
    Public domain, https://gallery.debconf.org/v/debconf1/roland/aap.jpg.html (accessed July 29, 2011). Photo: Roland Bauerschmidt.
    Much has been made of the fact that hacking and F/OSS development unfold in the ethereal space of bits and bytes. “Indeed, serious hackers,” writes Manuel Castells (2001, 50), “primarily exist as hackers on-line.” The substantial academic attention given to the virtual ways that hackers produce technology is undoubtedly warranted and rich, and has advanced our sociological understanding of labor and virtuality. But what this literature fails to substantially address (and sometimes even barely acknowledge) is the existence of face-to-face interactions among these geeks, hackers, and developers.
    Perhaps this is so because much of this interaction seems utterly unremarkable—the ordinary stuff of work and friendships. Many hackers, for example, see each other with remarkable consistency, usually every day at work, where they may share office space and regularly eat lunch together.During downtime they will “geek out,” perhaps delving deep in conversations about technology, hacking on some code, or patching and recompiling their Linux kernel just to try something out. On a given day, they might dissect the latest round of the Recording Industry Association of America lawsuits launched against person-to-person file sharers and bemoan the discovery of a particularly obnoxious security hole in the Linux kernel. If they live in a location with a high density of geeks, generally big cities with a thriving technology sector (for instance, Amsterdam, Montreal, Munich, Bangalore, Boston, São Paulo, San Francisco, Austin, New York City, and Sydney), face-to-face interactions are more common, especially since geeks are often roommates, or interact through informal hacker associations, collectives, and hackers spaces, now quite common in cities across Europe and North America. 20
    We should not treat networked hacking as a displacement of or replacement for physical interaction. These two modes silently but powerfully reinforce each other. Reading the latest technical, legal, or social news about F/OSS on a Web news portal every morning, then posting the article link on a mailing list (perhaps with a brief analysis), and discussing this news with friends over lunch all bolster the validity as well as importance of such public