The hacker's challenge: Active access to information, visceral democracy and discursive practice

Best, K. (2003) The hacker's challenge: Active access to information, visceral democracy and discursive practice. Social Semiotics, 13 (3). pp. 263-282.

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between hacking and democracy. It suggests that hacking, as a culturally formed and informed practice, is involved in struggles over the signification and significance of democracy. In particular, hacking is associated with an ethics and practice of active access to information. However, after tracing historical and cultural shifts in practices, discourses and representations of hacking, the paper also suggests that hacking is becoming increasingly dissociated from its founding cultures and their ethics, as computer technology and technological skill sets become more widely available, networked and encoded. As such, hackers' overall relationship to the active access of information, and therefore to democracy, remains ambivalent and uncertain.