Coding Freedom: an anthropologist understands hacker culture

Biella Coleman is a geek anthropologist, in both senses of the epithet: an anthropologist who studies geeks, and a geek who is an anthropologist. Though she's best known today for her excellent and insightful work on the mechanism and structure underpinning Anonymous and /b/, Coleman is also an expert on the organization, structure, philosophy and struggles of the free software/open source movements. I met Biella while she was doing fieldwork as an intern at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She's also had deep experience with the Debian project and many other hacker/FLOSS subcultures.

Coleman's has published her dissertation, edited and streamlined, under the title of Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, which comes out today from Princeton University Press (Quinn Norton, also well known for her Wired reporting on Anonymous and Occupy, had a hand in the editing). Coding Freedom walks the fine line between popular accessibility and scholarly rigor, and does a very good job of expressing complex ideas without (too much) academic jargon.

Coding Freedom is insightful and fascinating, a superbly observed picture of the motives, divisions and history of the free software and software freedom world. As someone embedded in both those worlds, I found myself surprised by connections I'd never made on my own, but which seemed perfectly right and obvious in hindsight. Coleman's work pulls together a million IRC conversations and mailing list threads and wikiwars and gets to their foundations, the deep discussion evolving through the world of free/open source software.

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Comments now open — sorry all!

  • [Just_Ok]

    blame #SonicWall?

• [Lexicat]

  Ok, so I can’t find any registered info on the IP address on the book cover (100.11.122.20). :)

  • [secretagentmoof]

     It’s part of Verizon’s 100.0.0.0 – 100.41.255.255 netblock.

• [Ben Babcock]

  Is this book available for purchase without DRM anywhere?

  • [Andrew Singleton]

    Book about the hacker mindset…. drm locked.

    #wtf #notfunnydude

    • [Lachlan Musicman]

      Guaranteed that Biella had nothing to do with the DRM – almost certainly a function of Princeton UP.

      • [Andrew Singleton]

        Likely so unfortunately.

        One of the many things i like about Doctorow is he managed to have all of his works with no DRM lock (how much of a factor he was in TOR going drm-free I dunno, probably alot but i don’t know.)

        • [Gabriella Coleman]

           It will be available as soon as I get my website up. It is under a CC license. Maybe someone will beat me to it but teaching minds takes a heck of a lot of time and I need to finish this week and I will put up the pdf DRM free.

        • [Andrew Singleton]

          I’d figured it was publisher rather than author enforced DRM.

          Also you’ve made my christmas buying list both for interesting subject matter and matter of principles to support people like you. 

  • [Gabriella Coleman]

    Come to gabriellacoleman.org in a week or 10 days and there will be a version to share and download and spread! It is under a CC license.

    • [Duchess of Fire]

      I graduated from McGill in 2010, & for 2 years in the Anthro dept I tried to bring up doing study projects on these precise topics, but no one pointed me your way. :(  While now I feel like I’ve missed a massive chance, I’ll at least have your book!

    • [Michael Bernstein]

      Hey, it’s been well over the 10 days. When can we download the book?

    • [Michael Bernstein]

      It has now been a month, and still no ebook download. What’s going on? Did your publisher pull a bait-and-switch, or have you just reinvented the release window?

      • [123]

        http://gabriellacoleman.org/Coleman-Coding-Freedom.pdf

• [Sites4 You]

   Well, title itself is interesting yet I wonder how about the content.