Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Week 4
After reading the chapters by Gabriella Coleman, I was most intrigued by the palpable panic felt by the hackers when their "efforts" could have possibly be deemed "useless" amongst each other and greater society. Poignantly, "Anon9" rallies the troops in a very (ironically?) Hollywood moment by declaring "We don't have 800 people because we tell the truth. we have 800 people that BELIEVE they are doing something."
The internet fosters an environment that proves with the right know how (or at least the willingness to LEARN the right know how) the little provolone can f*ck with the Big Cheese. Recently, my sister and I "hacked" our Wii to enable it to provide us with American Netflix. I've never felt that sense of elation, sticking it to the Man, as I did when we were successful. In most cases, hacking isn't about criminal deviance. It is simply to say you can, even though so many obstacles and rules are set in our way. All it took was a quick Google search and little technical know-how.
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I totally understand what you mean by the feeling of elation when you succeed in a technology "hack". What's interesting is your comment that "in most cases, hacking isn't about criminal deviance". I think this depends on your definition of criminal. While I would agree that in most cases, hacks aren't meant as large scale crimes. However, if you were to define "criminal" as anything that strays away from rules and how things are "meant to be", then wouldn't your act count as criminal deviance? You've allowed yourself access to a service (American Netflix) through a "backdoor" route, and therefore bypassed certain requirements/costs of having access to that particular service.
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