Free Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by E. Gabriella Coleman Page A
Book: Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by E. Gabriella Coleman Read Free Book Online
Authors: E. Gabriella Coleman
Tags: COM051000
last person to call; that felt really cool
the thing was, you had these message boards, where you talked about specific subjects
and people really got into exploring them
and everyone KEPT up on them
The Internet
As these lower-tech ponds for virtual communication dried up, a roaring ocean replaced them: the Internet. If the BBS felt like a small, cramped, and overpriced studio (although retroactively recalled as special because of its intimacy), the Internet was more like an outlandishly spacious penthouse apartment with many luxurious features—and a much more affordable one with each passing year.
With its array of complementary communication tools, email, file transfer protocols (FTP), and IRC, hackers naturally flocked to this technological oasis to continue to do what they did with unwavering passion on BBSs: access information, talk, collaborate, trade files, and make friends as well as some enemies. Geeks started to productively mine mailing list archives for technical data, and eventually Web browsers facilitated the search and discovery process. IRC, created in 1988 by a student in Finland, largely replaced the BBS for real-time communication. In a short period, an astounding number of IRC networks and individual channels spanning the globe appeared. 9
By virtue of the knowledge gained from these early experiences, geeks began to land gainful employment in then-nascent Internet-related industries (what we think of as the public Internet in certain respects began in 1992, when the US government opened it up to commerce). Some geeks operated one-person consulting shops, working from home-building database back ends for e-commerce Web sites. Others joined forces, dropping out of college to start a local or national Internet service provider or other small-scale technology firm. Hackers living in Silicon Valley would work ridiculously long hours for handsome benefits and inflated stock options at hip, smallish dot-coms, or more traditional tech firms like Oracle, Apple, and Adobe.
Free Software
During the years of early technological spelunking on the Internet, many hackers also came to learn about a new category of software—free software. Like the Internet, its full potential and meaning became apparent primarily through assiduous excavation, use, technological extension, and endless discussion with peers. During interviews, many developers could date their first rendezvous with free software—less in reference to calendar time, but usually with mention of the release version number of a piece of software (“I first discovered Linux in v0.9”) and the place of discovery (such as at work or school).
Whatever the location or time, most programmers who learned about free software anywhere between 1985 and 1996 greeted it as if they had stumbled onto a hidden treasure trove of jewels, with the gems being Unix-based software and its precious underlying source code. The experience of discovering that there existed an (almost) fully working Unix system (Linux is a flavor of Unix, and there are dozens of flavors) for a personal computer with available source code was, as one developer put it, “jaw-dropping.” Another hacker described it as “almost kinda like a hippie dream thing.” Excited but bewildered, the hackers I interviewed dove into this new and small technological cove, never to look back.
For much of the 1990s, but especially in the early part of the decade, the channels through which hackers learned about free software were informal,primarily by word of mouth (in person or online) at school or work, or perhaps through one of the early print journals. As one South African developer now living in the Netherlands recounted during an interview:
It was a friend in that big [college] residence who came along with a floppy, and because of his typical, very dramatic personality, he just put the floppy in my computer and switched it on, and up came Linux 0.9, and it was the end
The Internet
As these lower-tech ponds for virtual communication dried up, a roaring ocean replaced them: the Internet. If the BBS felt like a small, cramped, and overpriced studio (although retroactively recalled as special because of its intimacy), the Internet was more like an outlandishly spacious penthouse apartment with many luxurious features—and a much more affordable one with each passing year.
With its array of complementary communication tools, email, file transfer protocols (FTP), and IRC, hackers naturally flocked to this technological oasis to continue to do what they did with unwavering passion on BBSs: access information, talk, collaborate, trade files, and make friends as well as some enemies. Geeks started to productively mine mailing list archives for technical data, and eventually Web browsers facilitated the search and discovery process. IRC, created in 1988 by a student in Finland, largely replaced the BBS for real-time communication. In a short period, an astounding number of IRC networks and individual channels spanning the globe appeared. 9
By virtue of the knowledge gained from these early experiences, geeks began to land gainful employment in then-nascent Internet-related industries (what we think of as the public Internet in certain respects began in 1992, when the US government opened it up to commerce). Some geeks operated one-person consulting shops, working from home-building database back ends for e-commerce Web sites. Others joined forces, dropping out of college to start a local or national Internet service provider or other small-scale technology firm. Hackers living in Silicon Valley would work ridiculously long hours for handsome benefits and inflated stock options at hip, smallish dot-coms, or more traditional tech firms like Oracle, Apple, and Adobe.
Free Software
During the years of early technological spelunking on the Internet, many hackers also came to learn about a new category of software—free software. Like the Internet, its full potential and meaning became apparent primarily through assiduous excavation, use, technological extension, and endless discussion with peers. During interviews, many developers could date their first rendezvous with free software—less in reference to calendar time, but usually with mention of the release version number of a piece of software (“I first discovered Linux in v0.9”) and the place of discovery (such as at work or school).
Whatever the location or time, most programmers who learned about free software anywhere between 1985 and 1996 greeted it as if they had stumbled onto a hidden treasure trove of jewels, with the gems being Unix-based software and its precious underlying source code. The experience of discovering that there existed an (almost) fully working Unix system (Linux is a flavor of Unix, and there are dozens of flavors) for a personal computer with available source code was, as one developer put it, “jaw-dropping.” Another hacker described it as “almost kinda like a hippie dream thing.” Excited but bewildered, the hackers I interviewed dove into this new and small technological cove, never to look back.
For much of the 1990s, but especially in the early part of the decade, the channels through which hackers learned about free software were informal,primarily by word of mouth (in person or online) at school or work, or perhaps through one of the early print journals. As one South African developer now living in the Netherlands recounted during an interview:
It was a friend in that big [college] residence who came along with a floppy, and because of his typical, very dramatic personality, he just put the floppy in my computer and switched it on, and up came Linux 0.9, and it was the end
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