Programmers, Hackers and Hacks: the people and practices behind our machines

Mace Ojala is a part-time lecturer at the IT University in Copenhagen and teaches tech-y courses around computing and networked infrastructures. I called him up to get him talking about computer maintenance, a topic that is largely forgotten. Mace's reading list for this episode: Jérôme Denis, David Pontille. Why do maintenance and repair matter?. Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías & Celia Roberts (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory, p. 283-293, 2019, 978-1-138-08472-8.Marisa Leavitt Cohn: Convivial Decay: Entangled Lifetimes in a Geriatric Infrastructure. CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. February 2016 Pages 1511–1523 https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820077Steven Jackson. In Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, Kirsten Foot  (eds.). Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. 2014. MIT Press.Shannon Mattern. 2018. Maintenance and Care. Places Journal. https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/leejo. 2016. All software is legacy. Blogpost online at https://leejo.github.io/2016/02/22/all_software_is_legacy/ Lara Houston, Daniela Rosner, Steven Jackson, Jamie Allen (eds.). 2017. The whole issue :). continent. Issue 6 "Maintenance" http://continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/issue/view/27Chris Bowlby et al. "Maintenance". BBC Analysis. Podcast. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005mr 

In this episode, I will talk about inequalities, and in particular the regional inequalities that exist within a software production.References for this episode: 1. https://hackcur.io/category/inclusions-exclusions/

In this episode, I will explain how software development inherently runs on a culture of preventing and predicting stuff from going wrong. The reasons for this are the various forms of heterogeneity making up the sociotechnical system that is software.References for this episode: 1.  https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019

In this episode I want to talk to you guys about how developers work together - and the way in which intimacy and creativity is  a direct characteristic of the practice of programming or building software. References for this episode: 1. Graham, Paul. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age.  Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2004.

In this episode, I want to address the elephant in the room - and talk about “the hack” or specifically what hacking is as a practice. It would be easiest to do this I think by looking through the lens of the typical ‘hacker’ - like the hackers you guys are imagining do hacking - and talk about the security hacker. References for this episode: 1. https://hackcur.io/category/anti-security/

This episode is now meant to really give you guys a look at the other research out there that study hackers and programmers - so I’ll briefly give you a background of where to really search once you want to write or learn more about this topic. References for this episode: 1. Lupton, Deborah. Digital Sociology. Routledge, 2014.2. Kelty, Christopher M. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Duke University Press, 2008.3. Coleman, Gabriella. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. Verso Books, 2014.4. Ensmenger, Nathan L. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. Mit Press, 2012.5. Mackenzie, Adrian. Cutting Code: Software and Sociality.  Vol. 30: Peter Lang, 2006.

    In this episode, I want to give you a bit of a contextual history of around the culture of hacking and programming - by introducing to you the significance of a place called the Silicon Valley.References for this episode: 1. Ballmer going crazy on stage: https://hackcur.io/dealing-with-mini-steve-ballmers-at-work/2. Zuck and friend showing off their VR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-MkduVh0wM&t=196s3. Morozov, Evgeny. 2013. To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. Public Affairs. 

Who am I? And why am I telling you guys about hackers and programmers? In this episode, I will tell you guys about where I’m coming from as a researcher and how I got so concerned with the digital societies we live in. There aren't any readings to go along with this episode, but if you haven't so far, do browse through https://hackcur.io/ 

One of the centres of power in our societies lies in the hands of the hackers and programmers building and running the foundations we stand on. In this first episode, I will talk about the many faces of the hacker and why our reliance on them makes it increasingly important to learn about them.References for this episode: Magee, L., & Rossiter, N. (2015). Service Orientations. Data, Institutions, Labor., in Kaldrack, I., & Leeker, M. There is no Software, there are just Services. Luneburg, meson press. see: https://meson.press/books/there-is-no-software-there-are-just-services/Latour, B., (1999). Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.