Ippolita
Open is not Free. Digital Communities between Hacker Ethics and Global Market
keywords: media studies – cultural studies – antagonism
Ippolita is a group of people working about hacker ethics, free software, media-activism : a meeting place for reality pirates, an independent server, a community of writers. www.ippolita.net
keywords: media studies – cultural studies – antagonism
Hackers usually act rather than speaking. Nonetheless, in technoculture era they can give us interesting information, explaining their fondness of technology and the curiosity leading them to interact with it: to dismantle in order to understand, to play with machines, to share created codes.
To be computer pirates means to be reality pirates, to be active protagonists, to use instead of being used by technological changes, to employ technology in order to accomplish one's needs and desires, to be in constant dialogue with the information stream of web and human networks.
Today hacker ethics, sharing and co-operation practices are also used by the market, which has adopted hacker communities' developing methods in order to recover from the speculative trick of net economy. The new words sound like the old ones, from "free software" to "open source", but the sense has completely changed: curiosity about the new changes into permanent training; web fluidity into absolute flexibility; permanent connection for easy communication into a 24-hour work life. Everything is defined in terms of the global market's simple and effective slogans.
As a consequence, hacker culture tries to create new escaping ways, stressing the power of community and the importance of individual responsibility.
To be computer pirates means to be reality pirates, to be active protagonists, to use instead of being used by technological changes, to employ technology in order to accomplish one's needs and desires, to be in constant dialogue with the information stream of web and human networks.
Today hacker ethics, sharing and co-operation practices are also used by the market, which has adopted hacker communities' developing methods in order to recover from the speculative trick of net economy. The new words sound like the old ones, from "free software" to "open source", but the sense has completely changed: curiosity about the new changes into permanent training; web fluidity into absolute flexibility; permanent connection for easy communication into a 24-hour work life. Everything is defined in terms of the global market's simple and effective slogans.
As a consequence, hacker culture tries to create new escaping ways, stressing the power of community and the importance of individual responsibility.
Ippolita is a group of people working about hacker ethics, free software, media-activism : a meeting place for reality pirates, an independent server, a community of writers. www.ippolita.net