Hacking Capitalism by Johan Soderberg **Introduction Struglling of hackers provides a good reference to think abouth labour, struggle and technology. "There are no clear boundaries any longer between work time and leisure time, between the inside and the outside of the factory, and between waged and volunteer labour. The FOSS development model is a parade example of how the labour process has been diffused to the whole society." 6 The emergence of the social worker (Negri and Hardt) role of technological development. innovations as capital's way of copying with wokrking class resistance (Negri) "The architecture of the personal computer was more or less forced upon IBM by hobbyist computer enthusiasts. (...) the dream of the hobbyist computer enthusiasts to democratise the computer was realized at the price of an expanded market in consumer electronics. In the end, IBM benefited greatly from selling personal computers. It is hard to think that hardware hacers could have achieved their dream in any other way." 7 Marx >> man make their own history, but not under conditions of their own choosing. "An unfortunate side effect of free and open licenses might then be intensified exploitation of waged and voluntary labour."8 The users have become a major surplus labor for capital. "The enrolment of FOSS communities by corporations is part of a more general pattern in post-Fordist capitalism where audiences and users are 'put to work'. commodification of information, of the laboureres producing information. "Defiance against copyright law, the advancement of an open technological platform, and the assertion of the right to share information freely, are rejections of the commodity form as such. The individual anchor is under threat to be dissolved into the anonymous, ambulant, and playful authorship of user collectives." 8-9 user-centred innovation models "Capital might have lost its monopoly over the means of software production, but it has other methods to discipline the 'user force'. It can rely on its control over circulation, and, if worst comes to the worst, fall back on the state." 9 success of FOSS development model over proprietary software "It tell us about the inadequacy of capitalist relations in organizing labour in the information sector." 9 "A different labour relation is being invented in the play of FOSS developers." 10 ludic forms of resistance against the factory discipline "The hacker movement has submitted the development of computer thecnology under a model determined by the play-drive."10 "information commons" :: a high tech anarchistic gift economy :: economic activities in the computer underground. *** "A Background of the hacker movement" telephony and computers switchboard operators political dimension of hacking igeniously of living labour appropriate tools for its own purposes original meaning of the term hacker "The world was first used by computer scientist in the 1950s to express aproval of an igenious solution to a technical problem. These privileged few enjoyed a great amount of autonomy to do research and 'hack' while having access to very expensive equipment. After the end of the cold war, when computer equipment got cheaper while researcher lost some of their former autonomy, the joy of playing with computers was picked up by groups outside the institutions, by people calling themselves hackers." 12 joy of playing the story begins in the science laboratory with expensive equipment some of it finnanced by the military experimental place >> MIT >> place for experiments MIT scientist were looking and hoping for a symbiosis between man and machine>> They have a dream Vanebar Bush MArvin Minsky Sussman Norbert Wiener but computer technology was not ready for that. "Batch-run computers were provided with a set of instructions which had to be completed in advance. The computer processed the instructions in one chunk without allowing for any human interruptions. If something went wrong the researcher had no choice but to rewrite the program and start all over from square one." 12 solution to batch-run computers was the invention of time-sarhing computers. a new desing. "The selling case for time-sharing computers was that several users could share the capacity of a single computer. It saved a very expensive resource, computer calculation time. Later on, the principle of time-sharing was extended beyond the confines of the computer box. It was extended from a number of users in one place sharing a single computer to many users in a wide area pooling and sharing their combined computer resources." 13 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) race of technological supremacy between USA and USSR linked computers together in a descentralized fashion, with nodes inbetween terminals. "By dispersing the intelligence to the edges of the network, rather than collecting information on the whole system in a server and guiding every intrincate detail of the network from this centre, the problem of complexity was somewhat reduced." 13 In a network all the nodes are linked with their neighbours and there are several possible routes connecting any two destinations information packages to send information in a digital system>>> signal is trasnmitted as zeros and ones in information packages. 1969, ARPANET :: linked together small selection of universitites and military bases. exclusive at first for top academic research and military in the 1970s Transmission-Control-Protocol (TCP) Internet Protocol (!P) Increased flexibility of computer hardware >> 1970s less dependecy on gobernment and busniess support UNIX emerged to the side of isntitutions. MAde by 2 enthusiasst working at Bell LAb KEn Thompson and Dennis Ritchie >> computer enthusiasts "They had become disheartened and started their own, small-scale experiment to build an operating system. The hobby project was taken up in part to the side of, in part under the wings of, the American telephone company. UNIX rapidly grew in popularity and became so widely used by AT&T staff that the company eventurally endorse it."14 UNIX also became popular among users ourside the company distributed among universities could run on inexpensive minicomputers universities could afford source code was included "IT is logical that UNIX was designed to run on relatively inexpensive computers, since for most part it was developed on such computers by users with limited access to large-scale facilities." UNIX later metamorphoses into versions of BSD Unix, and later inspires GNU/Linux. accessability to small computers >> success of GNU/Linux "much computer technology has been advanced by enthusiasts who were, at least partially, independent of institutions and corporations. Users joined forces in a collaborative effort to improve UNIX, fix bugs, and make extensions, and to share the result with each other."15 environment of sharing and mutual support among computer enthusiasts early 1980s >> protocol for UNIX computers allows them to create alternative networks to the one of ARPANET, using telephone infraestructure. >> allows sharing files through teh pone line. "It facilitated community buidling and fosterd values that foreoboded later developments. With the option to connect computers over the telephone infrastructure, a cheaper and more accessible communication channel than ARPANET had been created."15 Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP) low speed and unreliable but cheap :: exchange point to point emails, files Capacity built into the system Unix sites began o form a network nation of their own, and a hacker culture with it. unix was not proprietary until 1984 HAcker culture grew out of american universities in the 1960s satisfaction mastering technology "The leading thought was to develop small-is-beautiful, bottom-up, and descentralized technology." 16 DIY technologies Create better technologies, better quality than the industry motivational force behind hacking. "HAckers (...) write code primarily for the skae of it, and politics flows from this playfulness." 17 hardware hackers around the Homebrew Computer Club in the mid 1970s HCC :: cooperative place group excitement of tinkering with electronics hacking tied to political vision and messianic hopes. "By constructing a cheap and available computer able to 'run on the kitchen table' , they set out to liverate computing form elite universities and from coorporate and military headquarters." 17 great accomplishments from playing tiwh electronic junk "The microporscessor had recently been invented by Intel and the company expected the item to be used in thinkgs like traffic light controllers. Hardware hackers thought differently. They combined Intel's microprocessor with spare parts and build small computers." 17 Ed Robert's Altair was built in 1975 first computer build for small-scale sale that enjoyed commercial success. market of hackers and radio amateurs. other prototypes emerged from HCC one of them as Apple. "It departedd from the earlier designs in that it was somewhat user-friendly and had functionis beyond just being a computer. Apple was a decisive step towards making a consumer market larger than the cabal of hardware hackers." 17 as demand for computers increased, venture capitalist put attention in the home computer market. "The establishment of a proper industry for small computers was crowned by IBM's decision in 1981 to launch the Personal Computer (PC)." 17 Hardware hackers succeeded in democraticing computer resources Mainframe computers where embodiment of office despotism in the 1960s and 1970s "By channeling their play-drive into computer building, hardware hackers forced the industry to embrace their dream of decentralized computing." 18 after 1982>>> AT&T "The company soon began to enforce ownership rights over UNIX. By then the operating system had been extended and rewritten many times over by students, scientists and enthusiasts collaborating across institutions and corporations. The attempt by AT&T to privatize UNIX qualifies as one of the most notorious enclosures saluting the dawn of the 'information age.'"19 politics of hackers >> issue of public access to source code. source code provides a list of instructions that can conveniently be read and modified by a programmer >>> like a cooking recipe closed software is delivered as binary code :: it can not be accessed by programmers. public access to source code relates to social change >>> FSF -task of liberating computers from proprietary software code. -GNU project GPL >>> free licence in 4 freedoms is not again comercialism freedom to use a program for any purpose, including commercial uses. GPL intervenes in how private property works. "Free licenses protect collective efforts of anonymous mass of developers from individual property grabs. Under the GPL, the creator inverts the individualizing force of copyright by denouncing his individual rights and has these returned back to him as a collective right. He enjoys the collective right not to be excluded from a shared body of work." 20 GNU/LINUX dream of computer run entirely on free software the kernel: heart of an operating system >> bridge between the software and the hardware on a computer Linus Torvalds >> 1991 inspired in another operating system : MINIX, wiritten by Andrew Tanenbaum as educational device. "Minix was designed for personal computers, expensive but affordable to (middle class, western) individuals." 23 Shipped with the source code but with restrictive licence Linus studied the design of Minix and constructed his own kernel from scratch. social factor >> users improving the software social relationships of property and licensing absence of private property relations FOSS aplications that target administrative and specialised functions have enjoyed greatest diffusion: -Apache soft for running web servers. Majority fo the internet servers run it. -Berkley Internet Name Domain (BIND) >> has become standard in its niche. It translates domain names into IP-numbers. -SEndmail: the most commonly used program for managing e-mai traffic. -WWW >>> a protocol for websites and hyperlinks that makes it more convenient to navigate through the Internet. Bazaar model of accessible, open development >> large-scale >> LInux was the first succesful example of such a project. Large number of beta-testers, co-developers >> critically speeds up the time of identifying and fixing bugs in the program. Takes advantage of the feedback cycle from user. New versions are released frequently, and improvements are made continuously. Cathedrals >>> model of conventional, centralised development >> tightly nit group of developers who rearely accept contributions from outsiders. Updates in cathedral-style software must undergo a long period of testing to ensure that all bugs are reoed before the program can be shipped to the market. higher motivation for its authors "For a hacker,(...) writing code is an end in itself. HE will always pay full attention to his endevour, or else he will be doing something else. IT is hard for companies to compete with that kind of commitment." 26 users of GPL software are guaranted the freedoms freedom to adpat the code for as long as they neer it. "The absence of captial, instead of the size of capital, provides the mest insurance that a product will stay relevant to users in the future." 27 FOSS success as a development model "inadequacy of capitalist relations in organizing labour in the information sector." 27 >> too many property claims that imped development, innovation >>> estranged wage relation that programmers are caught up in playfulness of hackers proves to be more productive users as co-developers "The FOSS movement is unique only because, in exploiting the failures of the capitalism system, it has demonstrated a prototype for struggle that is generic."27 Author argues that "self-organised labour can outrun firms in all sectrs were the concentration of fixed capital (i.e. large-scale machinery) and the division of labour (specialised knowledge) is not an insurmountable threshold." 27 play struggle of hackers understanding hacking in terms of class struggle as a political actor >> with its play alienation of labour in capitalism "When every point in the circulation of capital is productive to capital, it becomes hard even to see what unionised resistance could mean." 188 "The politics of hacking have quite a few things in common with eighteenth century pleveian struggle." 189 challenge against intellectual proprierty law. conditions for fighting capitalism are different, radically transformed. hacker provert : "dont resist what you can circumbent." example of circumvention : filesharing "MArkets in information are not attacked directly by hackers but are rendered superfluous when the same goods are made avilable for free elsewhere on the Interrnet. In their challenge against intellectual property law, the preferred strategy is to decentralise the flow of information and leave authorities without any targets to pursue."189 routing around the markets, private property, the state apparatus. "The hacker movement has demonstrated how to desconnect capital from the production process, at least in a restricted sense and as far as the production of computer algorithms is concerned." 189 potential