Coding democracy: how hackers are disrupting power, surveillance, and authoritarianism

By:

Webb, Maureen

Contributor(s):

Doctorow, Cory

Publication details: MIT Press Cambridge 2020Description: xvii, 389 pISBN:

9780262542289

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

364.168 WEB

Summary: Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy. Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace. Webb travels to Berlin, where she visits the Chaos Communication Camp, a flagship event in the hacker world; to Silicon Valley, where she reports on the Apple-FBI case, the significance of Russian troll farms, and the hacking of tractor software by desperate farmers; to Barcelona, to meet the hacker group XNet, which has helped bring nearly 100 prominent Spanish bankers and politicians to justice for their role in the 2008 financial crisis; and to Harvard and MIT, to investigate the institutionalization of hacking. Webb describes an amazing array of hacker experiments that could dramatically change the current political economy. These ambitious hacks aim to displace such tech monoliths as Facebook and Amazon; enable worker cooperatives to kill platforms like Uber ; give people control over their data; automate trust; and provide citizens a real say in governance, along with capacity to reach consensus. Coding Democracy is not just another optimistic declaration of technological utopianism; instead, it provides the tools for an urgently needed upgrade of democracy in the digital era.

List(s) this item appears in: IT & Decision Sciences | HR & OB

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Book	Indian Institute of Management LRC General Stacks	IT & Decisions Sciences	364.168 WEB (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		004025

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Previous	362.10684 MAD Data-driven healthcare: how analytics and BI are transforming the industry	363.25968 HAS Digital forensics basics:	363.25968 MOU Digital forensics in the era of artificial intelligence	364.168 WEB Coding democracy: how hackers are disrupting power, surveillance, and authoritarianism	370.72 SRI A beginner's guide to learning analytics	384.3 GRE The internet of things	384.3 HAS Internet of things: challenges, advances and applications	Next

Table of Content:

1. The hacker ethic
2. The hacker challenge
3. A manifesto for the twenty-first century
4. The burden of security
5. Democracy in cyberspace
6. Culture clash
7. Democracy in cyberspace
8. The gathering storm
9. Hackers occupy
10. Distributed democracy
11. The value and risk of transgressive acts
12. Mainstreaming hackerdom
Coda.

Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy. Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace. Webb travels to Berlin, where she visits the Chaos Communication Camp, a flagship event in the hacker world; to Silicon Valley, where she reports on the Apple-FBI case, the significance of Russian troll farms, and the hacking of tractor software by desperate farmers; to Barcelona, to meet the hacker group XNet, which has helped bring nearly 100 prominent Spanish bankers and politicians to justice for their role in the 2008 financial crisis; and to Harvard and MIT, to investigate the institutionalization of hacking. Webb describes an amazing array of hacker experiments that could dramatically change the current political economy. These ambitious hacks aim to displace such tech monoliths as Facebook and Amazon; enable worker cooperatives to kill platforms like Uber ; give people control over their data; automate trust; and provide citizens a real say in governance, along with capacity to reach consensus. Coding Democracy is not just another optimistic declaration of technological utopianism; instead, it provides the tools for an urgently needed upgrade of democracy in the digital era.

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