Resistance to the Current: The Dialectics of Hacking //
ByJohan Söderberg,Maxigas
The MIT Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/13466.001.0001
<https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/13466.001.0001>
ISBN electronic: 9780262372008
Publication date: 2022
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5494/Resistance-to-the-CurrentThe-Dialectics-of-Hacking
*How hacking cultures drive contemporary capitalism and the future of
innovation.*
In /Resistance to the Current/, Johan Söderberg and Maxigas examine four
historical case studies of hacker movements and their roles in shaping
the twenty-first-century's network society. Based on decades of field
work and analysis, this intervention into current debates situates an
exploding variety of hacking practices within the contradictions of
capitalism. Depoliticized accounts of computing cultures and
collaborative production miss their core driver, write Söderberg and
Maxigas: the articulation of critique and its recuperation into innovations.
Drawing on accounts of building, developing, and running community
wireless networks, 3D printers, hackerspaces, and chat protocols, the
authors develop a theoretical framework of critique and recuperation to
examine how hackers—who have long held a reputation for being
underground rebels—transform their outputs from communal, underground
experiments to commercial products that benefit the state and capital.
This framework allows a dialectical understanding of contemporary social
conflicts around technology and innovation. Hackers' critiques of
contemporary norms spur innovation, while recuperation turns these
innovations into commodified products and services. Recuperation
threatens the autonomy of hacker collectives, harnessing their outputs
for the benefit of a capitalist system.
With significant practical implications, this sophisticated
multidisciplinary account of technology-oriented movements that seek to
challenge capitalism will appeal to science and technology readers
interested in innovation studies, user studies, cultural studies, and
media and communications.
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