Resistance To The Current: The Dialectics Of Hacking

265 Pages·2022·1.55 MB·English

by  Johan Söderberg, Maxigas

RESISTANCE TO
THE CURRENT
Information Policy Series
Edited by Sandra Braman
The Information Policy Series publishes research on and analysis of significant problems
in the field of information policy, including decisions and practices that enable or
constrain information, communication, and culture irrespective of the legal siloes in
which they have traditionally been located as well as state-l aw- society interactions.
Defining information policy as all laws, regulations, and decision-m aking principles
that affect any form of information creation, processing, flows, and use, the series
includes attention to the formal decisions, decision-m aking processes, and entities
of government; the formal and informal decisions, decision- making processes, and
entities of private- and public-s ector agents capable of constitutive effects on the nature
of society; and the cultural habits and predispositions of governmentality that support
and sustain government and governance. The parametric functions of information
policy at the boundaries of social, informational, and technological systems are of global
importance because they provide the context for all communications, interactions, and
social processes.
A complete list of the books in the Information Policy Series appears at the back of
this book.
RESISTANCE TO
THE CURRENT
THE DIALECTICS OF HACKING
JOHAN SÖDERBERG AND MAXIGAS
FOREWORD BY RICHARD BARBROOK
THE MIT PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND
© 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC- BY- NC- ND license.
Subject to such license, all rights are reserved.
The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided
comments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential
for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge
with gratitude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers.
This book was set in Stone Serif by Westchester Publishing Services.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Söderberg, Johan, 1976– author.
Title: Resistance to the current : the dialectics of hacking / Johan
Söderberg and Maxigas.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022] |
Series: Information policy | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022007904 (print) | LCCN 2022007905 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780262544566 (paperback) | ISBN 9780262372015 (epub) |
ISBN 9780262372008 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Hacking. | Computer crimes. | Capitalism.
Classification: LCC HV6773 .S638 2022 (print) | LCC HV6773 (ebook) |
DDC 364.16/8—dc23/eng/20220711
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022007904
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022007905
This book is dedicated to the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

CONTENTS
SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION ix
FOREWORD xiii
1 INTRODUCTION: THE DIALECTICS OF HACKING 1
2 THEORIZING CRITIQUE AND RECUPERATION 15
3 COMMUNITY WIRELESS NETWORKS: A DARKNET OF LIGHT 59
4 OPEN- SOURCE 3D PRINTING: REPRODUCING MACHINES
AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 87
5 HACKERSPACES: MEMORY AND FORGETTING THROUGH
GENERATIONS OF SHARED MACHINE SHOPS 123
6 INTERNET RELAY CHAT: A TIME MACHINE THAT STOOD
THE TEST OF TIME 159
7 CONCLUSION: THE STRUGGLE AHEAD 189
NOTES 203
REFERENCES 207
INDEX 231

SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Sandra Braman
Capitalism comes with big moves— accumulation, a world system, commo-
ditization, and on. Technologies have long been fundamental to such
thrusts, as has resistance to the technologies that serve capital. “Just say
no,” refusing or even destroying the technologies that serve capitalism,
the Luddite approach, is one way of pushing back. Another is hacking—
making your own technologies, using them in your own ways, and making
them freely available to others. Resistance to the Current offers major contri-
butions to theories of capitalism and of hacking with original conceptual-
izations and analyses of diverse recuperations supported by evidence from
detailed analyses of quite various, little known, and quite fascinating cases.
Authors Johan Söderberg and Maxigas understand hacking to operate
on three time horizons—t he life cycle of individual hacker projects and
their associated hacker communities, hacker projects and communities
working with particular technologies in a coevolutionary dance with the
industries that attempt to recuperate their creative efforts for capitalist
purposes, and the epochal transformations of capitalism within which
the other two time horizons unfold. “Labor” comprises three layers of
workers who become involved with hacker projects outside of an employ-
ment context: commons- based peer production communities, of which
hackers are only one example; the “crowds” of users of and audiences for
particular technologies that appear to form voluntarily but are often and