Coding Democracy: How a Growing Hacking Movement Is Disrupting Concentrations of Power, Mass Surveillance, and Authoritarianism

by Maureen Webb

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.

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Politics, Collections

416 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 2020

Reviews

[Gi V · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a friend who recently announced (on social media) that she would be leaving social media. She gave us some time to contact her if we wanted some "real world" way to reach her going forward. I would like to do the same (as I post here on another social platform), but I don't have the courage. I think it would make me ridiculously lonely. Anyway, I know I'm being taken advantage of, that my privacy is a fallacy, and that I'm complicit in the whole thing because I'm not actively looking for alternatives. I know that. This book made it so much more real and intractable.

[Alexander Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

In terms of the title of this book, had you read Steven Levy or Eric Raymond you would already know, in theory, the answer to this concern. In fact the first three chapters of this book are almost exclusively throat clearing to explain why she's reorienting those works of great hacking history. These first chapters reorient anarchist and radical libertarian ethics to reconcile with technological laws more directly. She motivates this pretty well, and in some ways I'm glad it was done by a lawyer who specializes in labor. It really gave an aura of recognition that we are ultimately still talking about people working tirelessly and thanklessly, often at great risk of public judgement, spite, and misunderstanding for hackers' radical ideologies.

This book succeeds at using histories of hackers and Liberal governance of technology to show an inevitable reckoning of philosophy of governance for popular views of democracy in and outside of western states. Yet this, in of itself is not new. _Empire_, _The Stack_, and _Protocol_ have alluded to precisely all of this at various scales. This is a very good summary of how all of this has become "history" in the present moment, so to speak. Indeed, this book is more of a ethnographic and legal historical account of protocols and hacking ideology. It in some ways is a first draft to explaining the 21st century history of hacking as a new political position that is neither anti-technologist nor pro-silicon valley; nor is it pro- or anti- capital/collective/communal/etc. Instead its an ideology about what should be technologically "open" and what should not, and who has or is fighting to have the power to decide these things. Yet to do this, she could have simply focused on a literature review of existing literature rather than going off to struggle with basic technology at German hacker conferences, only to decide she didn't quite understand the pedantic nature of hackers.

I think a facet of this book fails in a peculiar way. Webb, when talking about legal structures as they extend from previous conversations with hackers or her history of policy, is clearly in the know! She navigates that space with ease. What she seems to get wrong is the importance of cultural flair. She spends large sections of ethnographically questionable chapters searching for bullet points that she wishes to unpack in later chapters. Yet, she distracts the reader by focusing on the speaking styles of people, the music they listen to, the technologically pedantic nature of their conversations relative to her more theoretically traditional democratic valued interpretations of their responses. She does not seem fully open to listening to hacking experts without being laden with arguments that hackers more style than philosophy at times. This is despite the fact that often when she finds herself irritated with their pedantic-ness, she admits they're predicting the arguments she's going to make and they already know why she's wrong. She could have done better to have avoided sticking to her own ideology of "technological democracy" and listened to theirs more clearly as opposed to writing it off as an optimistic "positive chaos" (which she does repeatedly). Sure, it's "chaos", but it's not pop culture, hollywood-esque anarchy. These are practicing ideologists with a detailed description of who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. They have strong virtues. Also, to these hackers' credit, they are nothing if not methodical! I just wished Webb had interpreted them as such instead of simply reducing her own lack of understanding of technical aspects as hacker "chaos".

[Tavish · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, the author talks about how hackers and tech-activists are shaping our digital and real world. She also covers a lot of the history of important events, people and places where hacking/hackers and tech activism played a big role. For me, this book was a reminder for the things that should be making us concerned, angry, or sometimes even hopeful - from Wikileaks, Aaron Swartz, Bitcoin, to crypto-parties and hacker camps at CCC.

I really like this book, the author is really smart, and has covered a lot of ground talking to people and documenting the history and presenting the hacker ethic.

Original: https://ntavish.in/blog/2024_books/#c...

[Mattia Brambilla Pisoni · Rating 2 out of 5]

She doesn’t get the point. Fancy and interesting anecdotes on the hacking world, but there is no single argument, besides things al ready known since ages

[Vaughan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Technology is shaping democracy and society. Maureen Webb aims to make how we've got to this point accessible to those that don't live and breathe the technical world. During her research she learns and shares some valuable operational security practices.

Early on in the book she covers the Chaos Computer Club, Free Software Foundation, the Electronics Frontier Foundation, and Wikileaks. I felt nostalgic with many of the tales in the book, but I wonder whether all of that history would be as interesting to those outside the tech industry. While it is well written I fear she might have lost her "every-person" target audience before getting to the crux of her thesis.

There is a lot of good content in here - but I'm not sure it has the hook to reel in and retain those who don't already have a strong interest in technology and policy.

[Loraine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wanted to be, and could have been, a great primer on the intersection of tech and democracy. It covers the evolution of tech culture ethos over the years, from its anarchist roots to its libertarian ideals, and the later forays into neoliberalism and then its decentralization backlash.

How it fails in this effort is by trying to be a thoughtful narrative, reading more like the author's wistful diary than anything academic or informative. Those parts were annoying and boring detours from the informative meat of the book.

[Carlosfelipe Pardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sort-of agree with the overall principles of the book, but it’s extremely detailed and goes into every story in such depth that I end up lost. In any event, it’s a definitely good review of the history of hackers and their motivations, and what that could (potentially) accomplish. I would like to know the author’s view today, six years after having written it - many things have changed, many of the platforms she mentions don’t exist anymore, and technology has taken a turn for the very worst…

[Jules Arntz-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting exploration of different ways of conceiving/creating our online future. Some key truths including “Without the commons, modern market society would atrophy.”

[rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very cool topic but I kinda lost interest halfway through 😒

[Kathleen Yearwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

soooo boooooring. hard to remember when you used to be sort of fun.