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Hacker Cultures: The Conference Podcast
As Covid-19 turned most conferences virtual, so to combat Zoom-fatigue, at 4S/EASST 2020 we decided to try another format and turn a conference session into a podcast. Among hundreds of panels, papers and sessions, our panels rounded up all sorts of researchers who study what it is to be a hacker, and what hacking, programming, tinkering and working with computers is all about. We have continued biennally for full three seasons.
The newest season comes to you from the 2024 join Society for Social Studies of Science/European Association for the Study of Science and Technology conference (4S/EASST) in Amsterdam, titled "Making and Doing Transformations".
The second series was from EASST 2022 titled "The Politics of Technoscientific Futures" held in Madrid in July 2022. Our panel was titled "Hacking Everything. The cultures and politics of hackers and software workers". The first series was from 4S/EASST in "virtual Prague" in August 2020, titled "Locating and Timing Matters: Significance and agency of STS in emerging worlds".
We the hosts are Paula Bialski, who is an Associate Professor at the University of St. Gallen, Andreas Bischof who is a Research Group Leader at Chemnitz University of Technology, and Mace Ojala, a PhD scholar at Ruhr-University Bochum. Audio production by Heights Beats at Hotmilk Records. The theme track of first series is "Rocky" by Paula & Karol. Heights Beats produced the theme track of the second series. Funding for the editing of this first series comes from University of St. Gallen, the second from Chemnitz University of Technology.
Hacker Cultures: The Conference Podcast
Episode 1 (2024) Charles Berret: Metis and the hacker
In this episode we hear Charles Berret from Linköping University characterize the cunning and craftiness via a concept from ancient Greek.
The concept of 'metis' offers an especially effective means of characterizing the intelligence and technical practice of hackers. Metis, for the ancient Greeks, denoted the improvisational craftiness of a figure like Odysseus, whose intuitive understanding of the regularities in a particular system or situation facilitates acts of subversive cleverness. After all, it was Odysseus who devised the Trojan Horse, perhaps the first hack recorded in Western literature, and later the namesake of an actual variety of malware. This is a revealing affinity, and the connections between metis and hacking run deep. Metis is an especially useful concept for understanding hackers because it is a form of practical knowledge distinct from episteme and techne. Whereas episteme denotes the pursuit of factual regularities in the natural world, and techne implies the application of episteme for engineering, craft, and material production, both episteme and techne are inherently systematic. In contrast, the essential characteristic of metis is its subversion of systems and regularities, finding surprising sources of flexibility where others see only patterns and rigidity. To view hackers through the lens of metis also helps explain why hacking thrives in settings characterized by what James C. Scott calls "seeing like a state," that is, where an excessively schematic reduction of a system's natural complexity leads to the concealment of idiosyncrasies that become ideal sites for a hacker's exploitation. Developing an account of metis offers a new framework to explain why hackers thrive in infrapolitical practices that are inherently opposed to seeing like a state.
This episode is a live recording from Hacker Cultures! The Podcast Panel Season 3 panel organized at the European Association for the study of Science and Technology and Society for Social Studies of Science EASST/4S 2024 conference in Amsterdam on 2024-07-16. The hosts are Paula Bialski, Andreas Bischof and Mace Ojala. Audio production by Heights Beats at Hotmilk Records, who also produced the theme track. We are grateful for Chemnitz University of Technology for funding.