Abstract
This article outlines the nature of hacking and then draws implications from this for understandings of technology and society in the digital age. Hacking is analysed as having a material practice related to computers and networks taken up by two core groups: crackers who break into other people’s computers and network and the Free Software and Open Source who produce software based on an understanding of property as distribution. Hacking works constantly to develop determinations between technology and society in both directions. This conclusion is then theorised in relation to Hutchby’s concept of affordances and is compared to classic accounts of technological determinism. Accounts of technology and society in the digital age need to consider both technological and social determinations, that such determinations are particularly fluid in relation to programming and that understanding power and politics in relation technology needs a concept of technological and determination.
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Hacktivists are political activists, most often associated with the alter–globalisation movement, who utilise hacking techniques to create grassroots activist political campaigns. Hacktivists produce both ephemeral electronic civil disobedience actions, such as blocking online sites with mass electronic action, and they try to create infrastructures of secure anonymous communication often to support human rights workers (Jordan and Taylor, 2004). Cyberwar is the use of cracks by one nation–state against another nation–state. For example, it is widely believed that the Chinese government has been hacking both the U.S. and European governments for some time, seeking out illicit information and in one incident crashing the U.K. Parliament’s network (AFP, 2005; Norton–Taylor, 2007; Pilkington and Johnson, 2007). Cyberterror is the use of cracking techniques in a strategy of seeking social change through attacks that produce psychological as much as physical damage. There are almost no recorded cyberterror attacks, though the potential for damaging communication systems, infiltrating civilian infrastructure or attacking military targets seems clear (Verton, 2003; Weimann, 2006). Finally, cybercrime is the use of cracks to generate personal gain, usually financial gain. The possibilities here range from widespread “phishing” attacks that seek to compromise individual’s computers to cracking open bank systems to illicitly transfer money (Wall, 2007; Yar, 2006).
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