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rc3 preroll music
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Herald: All right, so our next talk is[br]called Hacking Diversity, where we
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basically try to treat a really awkward[br]question about these spaces that we move
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in here, which is that we really have[br]these ideas about inclusion and diversity.
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But in the end, most of the people that[br]come just look like me. And in open
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source, most people look like me. And this[br]is extremely strange, right? Because we
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have all these ideas about diversity and[br]everything. And today we try to answer the
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question of why this happens and maybe[br]what we can do about it. Our speaker for
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this is Professor Christina Dunbar-Hester.[br]She's a professor at the University of
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Southern California, I think. And today[br]she is preparing, uh, she is showing
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essentially a condensed version of a book[br]that she just wrote, called Hacking
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Diversity. And I'm really looking forward[br]to this talk because I also have asked
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myself these questions and I don't know [br]the answers.
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So I'm looking forward to this.[br]Please Christina.
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Professor Christina Dunbar-Hester: Thank[br]you so much. Thank you for the
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introduction and thank you for the[br]invitation and thank you for all of your
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labor to get this remote experience off[br]the ground. So I'm really happy and
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excited to be here, whatever that is. And[br]I will get into the talk. Let's see here,
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OK. Let me know, you should be able to see[br]slides now. If that didn't work, let me
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know. OK, thanks. This is not a best[br]practices talk so much as a first
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principles and how did we get here talk?[br]My examples are mostly from the US, but
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they are part of a broader Euro-American[br]milieu. And so to get started, I think I
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want to put up this quote from the Free[br]Software Foundation from 2012. And the
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goal of this talk is really to give some[br]context. And I think at the almost very
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end of 2020 it's safe to say that this is[br]a fairly mainstream and uncontroversial
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topic, but it wasn't always this way. So[br]the quote says: "The free software
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movement needs diverse participation to[br]achieve its goals. If we want to make
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proprietary software extinct, we need to[br]make everyone on the planet engage with
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free software. To get there we need people[br]of all genders, races, sexual orientations
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and abilities leading the way. And as I[br]said, I think this is a very recognizable
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sort of discourse now, but it hasn't[br]always been. And I'm going to sort of
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unpack this for a little while. The[br]outline of the talk, this is a pretty bare
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bones outline, but there's going to be a[br]lot of sort of history and context and
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then a little bit about the value and goal[br]of diversity and how it relates to profits
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and markets and also the goal of diversity[br]and how it relates to other values,
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particularly justice. And I want to note[br]that there's a couple of content warning
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slides on here. One, for people who have[br]been involved in promulgating genocide and
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another for a person who's been ejected[br]from hacking for abusive behavior. And so
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there will be a warning preceding each of[br]those. OK, so first, talking about
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genocide. In the 19th century in the[br]United States and even into the 20th
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century, there was an idea of a sort of[br]frontiersmen, brawny man who you can see
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here. This is a folk hero, but was[br]important enough to still be being
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represented on television in the 1960s. [br]And the sort of consistent thing
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here is going to actually go, this is the[br]genocide one, to these sort of consistent
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representations. You can see these folks[br]are wearing, well, they're men and they're
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being manly and they're wearing animal[br]hide with the implication that they maybe,
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you know, shot the deer themself. They[br]carry a gun, they're in naturalistic
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settings. They're sort of rough and ready[br]for anything. I'm drawing here on
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historian Susan Douglas, who argues that[br]around the turn of the 20th century,
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society started to change. And so even[br]though there was still this mythos of this
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brawny frontiersmen, what society actually[br]needed was a reconfigured masculinity that
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didn't sort of have this rough physical[br]brawny masculinity. And so masculinity
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itself, she says, was reconfigured to what[br]she calls technical masculinity. And so
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the masculinity was sort of refashioned to[br]be about mastery over machines and
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particularly these sort of new cutting[br]edge electronic machines, which in this
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case was radio. So radio experimentation[br]in the very early 20th century, first
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wireless telegraphy and then later[br]wireless sound transmission, which became
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broadcasting, she argues, is a way to sort[br]of refit masculinity or the way the
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society was changing. It was more urban.[br]There was more specialized division of
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labor needing people to work in a[br]professional white collar fields with
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technology as opposed to going out and[br]settling the West. And so here we see
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technical, technical masculinity,[br]entrainment basically, a father with his
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very young son teaching him this is a way[br]to be in the world. And Douglas argues
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that this started with ham radio in the[br]early 20th century. But perhaps
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unsurprisingly, it continued to sort of[br]persist over time. And so my next few
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slides are showing the same technical[br]masculinity, which is about, you know,
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curiosity, solving a problem, you know,[br]expressing your will with technology only
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with different sorts of technical[br]artifacts. And so here this is the Model
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Railroad, made very famous in Steven[br]Levy's book about hackers. We also have,
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and this is probably about the 1950s. [br]We have phone phreaking in the 1960s
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and here this is also a 2600 [br]magazine from the 80s, sort
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of continuing to mythologize phone[br]phreaking. Going into the 70s, we
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see this with computers, the Homebrew[br]Computer Club, a really important hobbyist
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formation for both, you know, the history[br]of Silicon Valley, but also the history of
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hacking and free software. It was people[br]who were sort of building and tinkering
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and experimenting. And so what we're[br]starting to see here is even as the tech
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shifts, the technical masculinity stays[br]consistent. And this is probably the early
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80s and the slide is just an ad for a[br]microcomputer. But we can see not only the
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representation of masculinity at the[br]center, we also see femininity in relation
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to the technology, which is to say it's[br]just the sort of ancillary handmaiden for
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the sort of male agent here. And as I[br]said, this is certainly a really cheesy
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ad, but I think, I hope underscores the[br]sort of consistent promulgation of this
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relationship with technology. And so I [br]want to suggest is that tech here over the
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20th and into the 21st century is not just[br]reflecting a legacy of division, of which
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gender prescription, gender roles are a[br]part of this, but is actually actively
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been involved in enforcing this. And so[br]we've got basically a white patriarchal,
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Christian, native-born supremacy, and a[br]global system of racial capitalism. And so
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I've shown you who's sort of at the top of[br]this hierarchy. We've got colonized
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subjects, immigrants, women, rural and[br]lower class people, indigenous people
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coming out on the bottom. And both[br]builders and consumers of tech are
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implicated in this tension. OK, so going[br]back even further in the history to sort
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of where some of this comes from. I'm not[br]sure how many of you thought that in a
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discussion of hacking you'd be looking at[br]a 19th century American oil painting. But
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here we are. This is called American[br]Progress. So I think mythologized American
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progress from the late 19th century. And[br]as you can probably see, there's a real
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sort of light to dark element of the [br]photo, of the picture, the painting. And we
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have this maiden who's really not so much[br]a person, but more like a God, this is
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sort of Greek iconography, sort of up[br]above everyone, up above man. And we do
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see technology in the painting. We see[br]the railroads and some ships on the right
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hand side, which is the east. And so you[br]can tell that she's sort of presiding over
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everybody, settling the west. And again,[br]they're bringing the light, which is
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civilization. The maiden herself is[br]actually carrying a book which symbolizes
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knowledge and what may not be obvious, but[br]she's actually got telegraph wire strung
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around her arm. And then you can see the[br]telegraph pattern behind her. And so this
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control over technology is part of how[br]white settler, you know, newly arrived
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Americans are maintaining or sort of[br]promoting and maintaining dominance over
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their new continent, their new continent.[br]And you can actually see, so we've
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got these white settler folks in the[br]center of the painting. All the way in the
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dark are indigenous people. And there's[br]also actually a bear. So they're sort of,
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again, a biblical hierarchy of man over[br]the beasts. And you can tell that the
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indigenous subjects and the bear are[br]probably either going to get run out of
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the frame or sort of forced to become[br]civilized. So this is very deep in how
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American sort of hierarchy and notions of[br]dominance get promoted and, you know, sort
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of renewed over time. And this is[br]interesting because this ideology is so
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strong that it's actually succeeded in[br]basically erasing some of the historical
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record. Like, for instance, we know that[br]there were women, highly skilled women
0:11:58.180,0:12:04.690
operators in World War 2 operating the[br]first electronic computers. This is ENIAC
0:12:04.690,0:12:11.279
in the US. But they were still, they were[br]sort of written out of the record and
0:12:11.279,0:12:20.410
computing, once it became popular and moved[br]out of a top secret military project, the
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womens' roles were basically effaced and[br]credit for dominance over and sort of
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control over the new technology publicly[br]went to men. And again, so we see this
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sort of sorting happening in all these[br]different ways, even in defiance of the
0:12:38.440,0:12:45.910
actual historical record. Another[br]instance, which may be kind of surprising
0:12:45.910,0:12:52.350
is this is a really wonderful article by[br]Lisa Nakamura that I'm drawing from here.
0:12:52.350,0:13:02.050
This is a Fairchild Semiconductor, so[br]they're based in Silicon Valley, they used
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to make microchips and associated[br]equipment in Silicon Valley, but they had
0:13:08.350,0:13:13.649
an intermediate period before outsourcing[br]that stuff to Asia, where they opened
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operations on a Navajo reservation in the[br]American Southwest. And so there's really
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interesting ways in which race and gender[br]basically become resources for valuing the
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labor of some kind of people more and[br]other kinds of people less. So this
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reservation is attractive because regular[br]American labor laws didn't obtain and they
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also, managers in their minds, thought, oh[br]there's this history of Navajo weaving and
0:13:47.600,0:13:55.480
sort of fine fabrication work. And so[br]there's a sort of stereotype that nonwhite
0:13:55.480,0:14:02.550
people, particularly women, particularly[br]in this day and age, Asian, have "nimble
0:14:02.550,0:14:07.740
fingers" and are going to be really good[br]and diligent at something that we need,
0:14:07.740,0:14:12.610
like electronics assembly, to be really[br]sort of diligently done. And so what we've
0:14:12.610,0:14:21.730
got here is the sort of overlay of Navajo[br]weaving and microchip. So Nakamura calls
0:14:21.730,0:14:28.009
this insourcing, sort of outsourcing[br]before outsourcing. And, you know, now
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those laboratories and factories have[br]mostly moved to Asia. But this sort of
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period of experimentation with trying to,[br]like, alienate the labor from the sort of
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managerial home. And so now we would[br]think, like, you know, your Apple products
0:14:43.120,0:14:47.880
as assembled in China, designed in[br]Cupertino or whatever. But that kind of
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thing, this is a sort of early moment of[br]that. And so, again, I want to sort of
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underscore that race and gender are a[br]resource for global capitalism to assign
0:14:58.670,0:15:04.899
worth to some people's bodies and work and[br]not to others. Another way that this
0:15:04.899,0:15:10.360
works, I don't know how much people in the[br]US will remember this, let alone outside
0:15:10.360,0:15:15.329
of the US, but this is a student, a high[br]school student who is a Sudanese American,
0:15:15.329,0:15:23.050
I believe, who was, you know, a geek. And[br]he was enthusiastic about doing a DIY
0:15:23.050,0:15:28.540
electronics assembly at home where he[br]built a clock and he brought it to school
0:15:28.540,0:15:34.921
and the school called police. And so here[br]we can see that whiteness has been a
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resource for avoiding criminalization for[br]certain kinds of sort of hacky
0:15:40.610,0:15:46.480
activities. I'm certainly not saying that[br]no white people have been criminalized for
0:15:46.480,0:15:51.579
hacking because that's not true. But[br]certain activities get more of a pass
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based on who's participating in them. And[br]I also want to point out that this legacy
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of division and this system of social[br]sorting is flexible. In 2015, it
0:16:06.160,0:16:14.670
could easily be turned to islamophobic[br]purposes, which is what happened here. And
0:16:14.670,0:16:20.129
so what I want to point out is there's[br]a sort of like, you know, history of
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division and really sort of policing who's[br]in bounds and who's out of bounds for the
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most celebrated category of technological[br]agent, but I also want to sort of
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introduce the idea that this is not[br]inconsistent in a way with diversity as a
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market value. Capitalism is actually happy[br]to affirm difference if it can help sell
0:16:48.529,0:16:54.319
something, even though here we also see[br]the sort of, you know, cultural and even
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legal system being brought to bear to[br]punish certain forms of difference. OK, so
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at this point, this kind of statement is[br]really ubiquitous. This is from 2012 from
0:17:06.160,0:17:12.810
a TechCrunch post. In my mind, the[br]women in tech discussion should really be
0:17:12.810,0:17:17.120
framed as having different people with[br]different experiences and different
0:17:17.120,0:17:22.820
outlooks helps you build a better product.[br]So this is a pretty different framing of
0:17:22.820,0:17:30.100
difference than the one I just showed you.[br]But the point is capitalism is
0:17:30.100,0:17:35.760
actually able to sort of reconcile these[br]in these contradictions in a way. And you
0:17:35.760,0:17:41.370
can also see this is my name tag from a[br]Google sponsored event I attended for work
0:17:41.370,0:17:46.940
for this book. And they're not only saying[br]we need women to help us build a better
0:17:46.940,0:17:52.730
product, they're also reflecting back this[br]sort of symbol of femininity, you know, the
0:17:52.730,0:17:56.810
pink Venus sign, which, of course, turns a[br]lot of people off. But it's you know, if
0:17:56.810,0:18:02.830
you're thinking about marketing, it's a[br]way to symbolize this inclusion. Right?
0:18:02.830,0:18:09.690
Now, I'm going to put up the only horribly[br]academic slide I have for the whole talk.
0:18:09.690,0:18:16.150
This is a quote from Herman Gray who says,[br]"Abstract notions of rights and freedom
0:18:16.150,0:18:21.580
and their expansion to new subjects elide[br]the social salience of race and gender as
0:18:21.580,0:18:26.140
a basis of inequality even as it[br]culturally recognizes and celebrates
0:18:26.140,0:18:32.130
differences." So here we can see the[br]market is happy to recognize and celebrate
0:18:32.130,0:18:40.130
difference, to sort of take up, you know,[br]women in tech or whatever, while sort of
0:18:40.130,0:18:46.720
papering over and doing nothing to unseat[br]the sort of core, which is that race and
0:18:46.720,0:18:53.370
gender are bases of inequality. So you can[br]sort of have this lip service, abstract
0:18:53.370,0:19:00.220
expansion of, you know, new identities.[br]But what is sort of always intact is even
0:19:00.220,0:19:04.190
if you're sort of bringing one group over[br]and saying, oh, you know, you're part of
0:19:04.190,0:19:11.550
the dominant group, now, in some way.[br]The system of sorting is remaining intact
0:19:11.550,0:19:18.020
and in a less abstract way. Like in the US[br]this summer, there is huge Black Lives
0:19:18.020,0:19:23.980
Matter protests, uprisings. And pretty[br]quickly, all these companies started
0:19:23.980,0:19:29.040
saying, oh, yes, Black Lives Matter, we[br]support this. You know, Amazon was really
0:19:29.040,0:19:34.720
prominent among them. And yet Amazon[br]doesn't stop to question whether or not
0:19:34.720,0:19:40.450
it's exploiting racialized workforce[br]during Covid with warehouse work and
0:19:40.450,0:19:44.810
delivery work. These are some of the[br]lowest paid workers. They are not getting
0:19:44.810,0:19:50.620
health insurance. They're not getting[br]consistent hazard pay or protection. And
0:19:50.620,0:19:56.570
they're dying at disproportionate rates.[br]But Amazon is very happy to say black
0:19:56.570,0:20:04.140
lives matter as part of the PR. Similarly,[br]they're still basically building
0:20:04.140,0:20:10.690
surveillance equipment, but there's no[br]inconsistency between the sort of
0:20:10.690,0:20:16.070
recognition and celebration of difference[br]while working to continue to cement that
0:20:16.070,0:20:22.580
difference and exploit that difference.[br]So all of this is to say is that diversity
0:20:22.580,0:20:32.220
is, in my opinion, a rather toothless [br]value to sort of attach to the work and
0:20:32.220,0:20:38.560
the sort of meaning for what's at stake[br]with working with tech and with inclusion,
0:20:38.560,0:20:44.130
too. Diversity can sort of bring[br]our attention to these patterns of social
0:20:44.130,0:20:48.300
difference. But if it ends there, it can[br]actually kind of draw us in the wrong
0:20:48.300,0:20:54.830
directions without the tools we might need[br]to, you know, actually make some of the
0:20:54.830,0:20:58.770
more justice affirming points that I[br]think are why people are drawn to these
0:20:58.770,0:21:04.760
topics in the first place. OK, so after[br]this digression, getting more some into
0:21:04.760,0:21:10.750
how this relates to hacking and free[br]software. So I've established a sort of
0:21:10.750,0:21:18.190
legacy of division. And I want to sort of[br]underscore that the hacking and free
0:21:18.190,0:21:23.530
software milieu has had this commitment to[br]freedom and openness. That's definitely
0:21:23.530,0:21:30.971
been at the core pretty consistently. But[br]historically, this has really had to do
0:21:30.971,0:21:36.030
with, the freedom and openness has been[br]about controlling technology, some free
0:21:36.030,0:21:42.970
speech of course. It's definitely about[br]the individual's exercise of freedom
0:21:42.970,0:21:47.430
without necessarily a lot of thought about[br]who the individual is, who's maximally
0:21:47.430,0:21:56.340
empowered to be free, or it's been about[br]individuals in collectives, but that are
0:21:56.340,0:22:01.770
relatively small and relatively[br]homogenous. And so what I want to suggest
0:22:01.770,0:22:08.150
is this sat within the bigger context of[br]tech and division, but without really
0:22:08.150,0:22:13.840
acknowledging this, because the freedom of[br]the individual was presented as a sort of
0:22:13.840,0:22:19.770
universal value. Even though in practice[br]it really, really wasn't. And I think
0:22:19.770,0:22:26.460
around 15 to 20 years ago that really[br]started to change. When I started working
0:22:26.460,0:22:31.620
on this project, there was already a good[br]deal of agitation forming some of these
0:22:31.620,0:22:38.800
groups in free software and related[br]projects to especially draw attention to
0:22:38.800,0:22:46.300
the sort of disparities around women and[br]Py Star was initially for sort of women,
0:22:46.300,0:22:51.230
and it was was trans-inclusive and I think[br]pretty quickly this started as a women,
0:22:51.230,0:22:57.640
but then it became often non-binary and[br]trans-inclusive, so not the sort of
0:22:57.640,0:23:03.400
essentialist version of women. Something[br]happened in 2006 that really caused this
0:23:03.400,0:23:10.670
topic to really spring to the fore in a[br]lot of these communities. There was an EU
0:23:10.670,0:23:18.110
policy report that came out. So the[br]research was from 2004/2005 that showed
0:23:18.110,0:23:26.230
that the rate of participation by women[br]and FLOSS was less than 2% and that was
0:23:26.230,0:23:31.180
significantly less even than academic and[br]proprietary computer science. And so that,
0:23:31.180,0:23:37.210
I think, really shocked people who had[br]maybe sort of intuitively known, oh, yeah,
0:23:37.210,0:23:44.460
this isn't very representative, but that[br]number really galvanized a lot of
0:23:44.460,0:23:50.550
conversations and got people started[br]talking and organizing basically in new
0:23:50.550,0:23:56.390
ways. And so I'm now going to show just a[br]handful of sort of what this report
0:23:56.390,0:24:04.980
caused, which is a bunch of conversations.[br]This is from the hackers on planet Earth
0:24:04.980,0:24:11.650
Hope Conference in New York in 2006. And[br]it may not totally be clear what's going
0:24:11.650,0:24:20.090
on here, but some folks had responded to[br]this statistic on the one hand and this
0:24:20.090,0:24:28.210
quote from this United States senator who[br]had said something like, sort of gibberish
0:24:28.210,0:24:32.900
about he was supposed to be considering[br]net neutrality and internet regulation,
0:24:32.900,0:24:36.670
and he said something like, the internet[br]is a series of tubes. It's not a truck
0:24:36.670,0:24:41.951
that you dump something on. And everybody[br]was making fun of him for not even, you
0:24:41.951,0:24:48.210
know, understanding networked computing at[br]all. But these activists sort of put these
0:24:48.210,0:24:52.930
together in a sort of mash-up. And they[br]were selling t-shirts, actually, that said
0:24:52.930,0:24:58.180
"The Internet: A Series of Tubes". And as[br]you can see, that's a sort of textbook
0:24:58.180,0:25:03.420
representation of a female reproductive[br]system. And so they just sort of brought
0:25:03.420,0:25:08.382
this to the conference and they were[br]trying to force a conversation about it
0:25:08.382,0:25:12.080
because they estimated, this is not an[br]official count, but they estimated that
0:25:12.080,0:25:18.940
there were maybe, the ratio of women to [br]men at Hope was like 1:40. And so they
0:25:18.940,0:25:25.400
just wanted to force a conversation about[br]this. This is an artifact from a little bit
0:25:25.400,0:25:32.700
later, 2014, about the rise of explicitly[br]dedicated feminist hacker spaces, and this
0:25:32.700,0:25:39.710
is from the US and it's just a flyer for a[br]Zine-making workshop, which is again, a
0:25:39.710,0:25:46.651
pretty mundane thing, but just the sort of[br]difference between the 2006 sort of flag
0:25:46.651,0:25:51.340
planting and something a bit later where[br]there's actually a separate space here.
0:25:51.340,0:25:57.660
And crucially, Zine-making isn't[br]necessarily in bounds with traditional
0:25:57.660,0:26:06.000
hacking, but it is closer to sort of[br]strands of feminist consciousness raising
0:26:06.000,0:26:11.910
and riot grrrl. And so there's a sort of[br]intermingling of these different kind of
0:26:11.910,0:26:19.140
threads of DIY, basically. This is another[br]artifact from someone in Philadelphia who
0:26:19.140,0:26:25.840
was an artist and a designer and was[br]trying to find a way from the stuff that
0:26:25.840,0:26:34.370
she knew how to do with craft and sewing[br]and find a way into electronics and soft
0:26:34.370,0:26:42.860
circuits and doing new things. And so she,[br]kind of for her own exploration, knitted a
0:26:42.860,0:26:50.310
scarf using Ethernet cables. And for[br]her this was a kind of speculative object
0:26:50.310,0:26:54.540
that was meant to help her find her way[br]into electronics, but also to kind of
0:26:54.540,0:27:02.200
start conversations about why haven't[br]these things gotten together. Also seeing
0:27:02.200,0:27:12.060
gatherings like this one, a more sort of[br]explicitly radicalized feminist hacking
0:27:12.060,0:27:15.980
convergence. And I don't know if everybody[br]can read all the text, but it says
0:27:15.980,0:27:20.930
"Trans Futuristic Cyborgs, anti-racist,[br]anti-sexist, gynepunk, DIY-DiWO - so taking
0:27:20.930,0:27:32.750
DIY of a sort of heroic individualist to[br]doing it with others, making it more
0:27:32.750,0:27:38.670
self-consciously collective and less[br]individualist self-reliant. It also says
0:27:38.670,0:27:44.310
gender-hacking, anti-capitalism, libre[br]culture, technologies, bio-hacking. So
0:27:44.310,0:27:53.000
again a sort of spectrum of politics and[br]interventions around hacking and feminist
0:27:53.000,0:28:00.950
hacking. And I'm going to dwell for a[br]moment on feminist servers. Haven't spent
0:28:00.950,0:28:07.000
too much, haven't had too much text on[br]slides. But this one is. So these are
0:28:07.000,0:28:11.960
artifacts that were on the one hand,[br]basically, like an independently
0:28:11.960,0:28:18.340
maintained server run primarily by women-[br]identifying folks or non-masculine
0:28:18.340,0:28:25.200
identifying folks running free software,[br]but they're also a sort of list of
0:28:25.200,0:28:31.050
networking principles that gets out of[br]that more kind of literal artifactual mode
0:28:31.050,0:28:42.090
into a more sort of speculative and[br]aspirational sort of politics of what it
0:28:42.090,0:28:46.540
means to be doing this. And so the first[br]couple- it's actually a very long list and
0:28:46.540,0:28:51.190
I only have a handful up here - the first[br]couple, I think, are very consonant with
0:28:51.190,0:28:58.590
kind of mainstream hacking, wants networks[br]to be mutable and read-write accessible,
0:28:58.590,0:29:02.370
and radically questions the conditions for[br]serving and service experiments with
0:29:02.370,0:29:08.070
changing client-server relations. Those,[br]again, seem kind of axiomatic for
0:29:08.070,0:29:14.150
mainstream hacking. But then the feminist[br]server starts to go in some other
0:29:14.150,0:29:19.321
directions; is autonomous in the sense[br]that she decides her own dependencies. I
0:29:19.321,0:29:23.090
think this one's really interesting and[br]important. It's again, it's getting away
0:29:23.090,0:29:31.310
from this kind of heroic, individualistic[br]or almost sort of libertarian sense of
0:29:31.310,0:29:36.450
autonomy. It's just the autonomy is about[br]deciding where you're dependent and being
0:29:36.450,0:29:42.970
sort of transparent and open about that.[br]It's not about bootstrapping or being
0:29:42.970,0:29:48.930
individually self-sufficient; does not[br]strive for seamlessness, division of
0:29:48.930,0:29:53.740
labor; the not so fun stuff is made by[br]people. That's a feminist issue. That one,
0:29:53.740,0:29:59.240
I think is really important. A lot of[br]hacking that goes on in, say, a Global
0:29:59.240,0:30:07.750
North context is about the artifacts and[br]the practices in that moment. But here
0:30:07.750,0:30:13.190
this is, if it's not clear, drawing[br]attention to where did that come from, it
0:30:13.190,0:30:18.510
shouldn't be a seamless experience for you[br]not thinking about the pre-history, the
0:30:18.510,0:30:24.060
supply chain of this artifact, which[br]actually started with mining and
0:30:24.060,0:30:32.740
fabrication and assembly and shipping. And[br]will also have a post-use life, which
0:30:32.740,0:30:40.770
might be recycling, might be very[br]hazardous reclaiming of precious metals
0:30:40.770,0:30:47.110
by people without good labor protections,[br]or might not. But sort of instead of
0:30:47.110,0:30:52.550
having this all be invisible, sort of[br]drawing it forward treats technology as
0:30:52.550,0:30:56.357
part of a social reality. This is a big[br]one, but it's really just sort of opening
0:30:56.357,0:31:02.120
up the space to acknowledge that legacy of[br]division that I was talking about earlier.
0:31:02.120,0:31:07.580
And takes the risk of exposing her[br]insecurity. I like this one so much. It's
0:31:07.580,0:31:13.461
it's really evocative on a few levels. But[br]at the most sort of basic level, what I
0:31:13.461,0:31:18.220
want to point out is that it's very[br]different than, again, a sort of threat or
0:31:18.220,0:31:24.220
a strand of hacking that's about owning[br]hard, or mastery or something. Instead,
0:31:24.220,0:31:33.760
it's being, you know, sort of present with[br]oneself and with others and disclosing
0:31:33.760,0:31:40.850
insecurities, which could be network[br]insecurities or personal ones. Right. So
0:31:40.850,0:31:45.720
it's taking what it means to be engaging[br]in hacking and all these new and sort of
0:31:45.720,0:31:51.710
mutated directions. One more example from[br]the sort of feminist hacking that I want
0:31:51.710,0:31:58.600
to just tell you about for a second was[br]this exercise. I was at a feminist hacking
0:31:58.600,0:32:05.970
convergence in Montreal in 2016 and people[br]did a exercise in understanding public key
0:32:05.970,0:32:14.440
cryptography as a dance where, you know,[br]instead of learning about this theory,
0:32:14.440,0:32:18.910
people actually tried to embody it. So[br]placing your body in the relationship with
0:32:18.910,0:32:24.961
tech and often some of these things happen[br]in kind of explicitly separate spaces, but
0:32:24.961,0:32:30.850
going through the principles of[br]cryptography in a spontaneously
0:32:30.850,0:32:36.600
choreographed dance and then performing it[br]all together. OK, so these are some of the
0:32:36.600,0:32:42.370
ways, the mutant strains of feminist[br]hacking. I don't want to suggest that this
0:32:42.370,0:32:47.770
has been just a very linear and conflict-[br]free progression. And so I do want to
0:32:47.770,0:32:54.700
dwell for a moment on just a single[br]instance of conflict, which probably
0:32:54.700,0:32:58.367
the details will be unfamiliar, but there[br]might be a sort of wider recognition
0:32:58.367,0:33:07.040
I think. So this is from a hackerspace in[br]Philadelphia in 2011 and a handful of
0:33:07.040,0:33:15.910
members of the space proposed holding an[br]event to hack sex toys, and they thought
0:33:15.910,0:33:24.278
it was a pretty uncontroversial suggestion,[br]the same as having an Arduino night or a
0:33:24.278,0:33:29.330
... you know, I'm making stuff up. But[br]they sort of put it out there as this:
0:33:29.330,0:33:34.380
well, let's do this on the Saturday. And[br]they were really surprised when a bunch of
0:33:34.380,0:33:39.250
other members of the space were very[br]opposed to it. And this is in the book.
0:33:39.250,0:33:46.510
It's a design for a DIY flogger made from[br]a bicycle tube. And this was on the
0:33:46.510,0:33:52.950
proposed sort of flier for the event. And[br]so what happened was they were really
0:33:52.950,0:33:57.090
surprised that other people in the space[br]were sort of like, no, no, we don't want
0:33:57.090,0:34:01.380
to have this here. We don't think it's[br]appropriate. And so here's a quote from
0:34:01.380,0:34:09.230
one of the people who was opposing the[br]event. And he says: "A lot of the hackers
0:34:09.230,0:34:14.260
here at the space are the Make Magazine/[br]Instructables type, not the Julian
0:34:14.260,0:34:19.099
Assange HOPEconference attending type or[br]even the kind that cares much about a
0:34:19.099,0:34:26.299
global movement of hacker spaces. I'm not[br]sure what category dildo-hacking falls in.
0:34:26.299,0:34:33.570
For a lot of people, DIY has to do with[br]the sort of father-son nostalgia", end
0:34:33.570,0:34:44.809
quote. So this is really interesting,[br]because we've got this acknowledgment of
0:34:44.809,0:34:51.840
hacking being a variety of things, and[br]maybe again, for some people in a European
0:34:51.840,0:34:56.759
context where hacker spaces are often[br]more political, maybe this Make Magazine
0:34:56.759,0:35:06.780
sort of home-project, personal fabrication[br]will be a little bit unrecognizable or
0:35:06.780,0:35:13.280
even disappointing, but it is part of[br]hacking and making in the US. And then, of
0:35:13.280,0:35:19.619
course, there's the "information wants to[br]be free" HOPE-conference, lock-picking all
0:35:19.619,0:35:25.880
these kinds of things, hacking that he[br]acknowledges. But he he says, I'm not sure
0:35:25.880,0:35:33.450
what dildo-hacking is, maybe suggesting[br]it's not even hacking at all. And then he
0:35:33.450,0:35:37.359
says, for a lot of people, DIY has to do[br]with this father-son nostalgia, which I
0:35:37.359,0:35:41.839
hope might make you think of the picture[br]I had up at the very beginning of the
0:35:41.839,0:35:50.569
father-son with the radio apparatus. And[br]so it's really interesting that this sort
0:35:50.569,0:35:55.309
of proposal that these people didn't think[br]of as being controversial turned into
0:35:55.309,0:36:02.460
this, pretty full on argument about what[br]even hacking is in the sort of essential
0:36:02.460,0:36:10.140
way. And so here's a reply from one of the[br]people who had proposed the workshop, and
0:36:10.140,0:36:16.059
she says: "So my concern here is that it's[br]a hackerspace. Initiative shouldn't be
0:36:16.059,0:36:21.289
punished, particularly initiative that[br]shakes up old patterns. Our space is
0:36:21.289,0:36:26.109
really stratifying into hardware-tinkering[br]as the core interest , and white males as
0:36:26.109,0:36:32.849
the demographic. I'm really frustrated.", [br]end quote. And so this again, I assume
0:36:32.849,0:36:41.849
that this is fairly recognizable to folks.[br]Right? If the core of what hacking is, is
0:36:41.849,0:36:48.319
taking it upon yourself to take artifacts[br]and practices that you already know how to
0:36:48.319,0:36:54.510
do in a new direction; like that's what[br]hacking is, according to a lot of people.
0:36:54.510,0:36:58.299
And so she's really surprised and really[br]dismayed and really, I think felt very
0:36:58.299,0:37:09.119
hurt and rejected that this was flaring as[br]controversy, and was really surprised that
0:37:09.119,0:37:15.509
people were sort of raising the prospect[br]that dildo-hacking was interruption of
0:37:15.509,0:37:24.769
a nostalgic father-son tech practice, that[br]was somehow offensive. Certainly, it seems
0:37:24.769,0:37:30.810
like part of the problem might have been[br]the introduction of sexuality and maybe
0:37:30.810,0:37:34.140
questions about whose sexuality;[br]sexuality that didn't seem to center
0:37:34.140,0:37:40.539
straight men. What happened was this[br]didn't get resolved. The people who had
0:37:40.539,0:37:48.170
proposed the workshop - included women,[br]men and non-binary people - actually left.
0:37:48.170,0:37:55.750
They decamped to a new space that was[br]forming, that was forming with more kind
0:37:55.750,0:38:01.420
of feminist hacking principles and[br]welcomed them there. And the first space
0:38:01.420,0:38:08.100
stayed how they were and didn't have to[br]keep having conflicts and grapple with
0:38:08.100,0:38:12.460
this kind of controversy anymore because[br]the people - and they weren't kicked out -
0:38:12.460,0:38:22.559
but they decided to leave. And so, I know[br]these conflicts have been very painful and
0:38:22.559,0:38:27.270
and alienating for people who have[br]experienced them, even though maybe the
0:38:27.270,0:38:32.160
content of this one seems almost funny or[br]something in hindsight. But what I want to
0:38:32.160,0:38:40.450
propose is that part of why this has been[br]so difficult for people in these spaces is
0:38:40.450,0:38:45.550
that people are actually wrestling with[br]this whole legacy of division that I laid
0:38:45.550,0:38:50.890
out in the first part of the talk. So it[br]may feel like you're just having an
0:38:50.890,0:38:56.690
argument with your fellow group members[br]who are a lot like you, but then you're
0:38:56.690,0:39:02.819
breaking down along some kind of line that[br]you both can't cross over to with the
0:39:02.819,0:39:12.920
other one. But there's a sort of really[br]deep sedimentary layer of who has been
0:39:12.920,0:39:22.289
anointed the sort of power of agency over[br]tech and for whom that has been sort of
0:39:22.289,0:39:26.240
a taken for granted tacit assumption and[br]who's had to sort of assert their presence
0:39:26.240,0:39:30.380
or their right to be there in different[br]ways. And so when there are these
0:39:30.380,0:39:34.440
conflicts and flashpoints, all of that[br]stuff is there. And that's actually really
0:39:34.440,0:39:42.140
hard to solve anywhere. But it's very,[br]very hard to solve in elective
0:39:42.140,0:39:47.140
volunteeristic associations, I think, also[br]so not not to say impossible, but there's
0:39:47.140,0:39:56.520
a reason these conflicts are difficult.[br]OK, so returning to diversity and this is
0:39:56.520,0:40:03.599
the same quote, I won't read it again, but[br]the sort of idea that women in tech are
0:40:03.599,0:40:10.430
there to bring forward different[br]experiences and build a better product.
0:40:10.430,0:40:14.150
Diversity is maybe necessary to start[br]these conversations, or the idea of
0:40:14.150,0:40:20.170
diversity, but I don't think it's[br]sufficient for the purposes here. It's too
0:40:20.170,0:40:26.440
easily sitting alongside market values,[br]which I think are not what people in
0:40:26.440,0:40:30.630
hackerspaces are primarily most[br]interested in. And that's not really why
0:40:30.630,0:40:36.690
they're there. And it's also very easily[br]steered away from the important political
0:40:36.690,0:40:42.799
work that I think people in hacking[br]communities often want to do. It can sort
0:40:42.799,0:40:49.150
of mutate into this contradictory thing[br]where you've got sort of market values on
0:40:49.150,0:40:54.170
the one hand, and something that isn't[br]what you set out to do on the other hand,
0:40:54.170,0:40:57.940
and I'm going to illustrate that with this[br]somewhat more provocative example. This is
0:40:57.940,0:41:04.730
a meme I stole from the internet. But the[br]point here is that you can make these
0:41:04.730,0:41:10.520
diversity affirming slogans. And here[br]we've got "Black Lives Matter" and "Yes,
0:41:10.520,0:41:19.010
we can" and LGBT sort of flags or slogans[br]on a bomber. You can make these diversity
0:41:19.010,0:41:24.739
affirming slogans fit within a system that[br]is fundamentally violent, carceral,
0:41:24.739,0:41:30.410
militarized. It doesn't necessarily[br]challenge the system itself to bring
0:41:30.410,0:41:36.479
forward individuals' identities as members[br]of marginalized groups. In fact,
0:41:36.479,0:41:40.690
capitalism is actually quite happy to[br]resolve what might seem like contradiction
0:41:40.690,0:41:46.300
here, by commodifying identity, selling[br]it as a brand without resolving the
0:41:46.300,0:41:51.710
fundamental tensions that we know that are[br]here, that have to do with social power
0:41:51.710,0:41:58.220
and dominance and exploitation. So coming[br]back to the free software quote from the
0:41:58.220,0:42:04.990
beginning, as I said, this sort of hit[br]consensus, but I'm actually going to argue
0:42:04.990,0:42:09.980
it's not really going far enough. Diverse[br]participation and making proprietary
0:42:09.980,0:42:16.240
software extinct are fine, but I think[br]they actually do not fully capture what's
0:42:16.240,0:42:21.640
at stake in these very tough conversations[br]that have been happening in hacking and
0:42:21.640,0:42:31.259
free software groups. And so, we might[br]think of this as, again, a point of entry,
0:42:31.259,0:42:34.759
but we might want to take it a bit[br]farther. And this is as far as I'll go
0:42:34.759,0:42:44.190
with prescriptions or how-to. So specific[br]in local voluntaristic communities that
0:42:44.190,0:42:49.920
are either your hackerspace in the city[br]you live in or the the project that you...
0:42:49.920,0:42:55.749
that's distributed, but that you work on.[br]So articulate values and politics.
0:42:55.749,0:43:01.839
Diversity is a good one. But I'm going to[br]say it's necessary and not sufficient. And
0:43:01.839,0:43:06.369
some of the things that I talk about in[br]the book include like other forms of
0:43:06.369,0:43:13.720
political beliefs, like decolonization or[br]attention to militarism that can actually
0:43:13.720,0:43:18.640
sort of force you to have sometimes harder[br]conversations, but ones that can clarify
0:43:18.640,0:43:26.490
values and goals. Obviously, I don't need[br]to tell hacking groups, but keep
0:43:26.490,0:43:32.740
theorizing and keep experimenting. That is[br]a way, whether it's crypto dancing or not,
0:43:32.740,0:43:38.589
it's a way to sort of like walk yourself[br]through what you're trying to sort of
0:43:38.589,0:43:43.460
build and iterate. And within spaces - I[br]think at this point this is fairly
0:43:43.460,0:43:47.259
uncontroversial, but I do chronicle in the[br]book how people got here - making and
0:43:47.259,0:43:53.609
enforcing rules, having conversations[br]sometimes one on one, not a sort of public
0:43:53.609,0:44:01.299
conflagration, flame war. But if people[br]feel safe, respect each other enough
0:44:01.299,0:44:07.900
to actually talk through what is the sort[br]of point of contention or difference and
0:44:07.900,0:44:13.349
see if you can understand one another. The[br]other thing I want to point out though, is
0:44:13.349,0:44:18.560
that there's a whole lot of stuff going on[br]here that is much, much bigger than the
0:44:18.560,0:44:24.930
spaces and communities that you're in. And[br]so it is kind of a mistake and no one's
0:44:24.930,0:44:31.339
fault that you can't solve all of this in[br]the groups that you're in. And so there
0:44:31.339,0:44:38.450
also has to be much bigger society-wide[br]goals that we all have our eyes on,
0:44:38.450,0:44:43.720
because if we solve some of this stuff,[br]then, lo and behold, quote, "diversity in
0:44:43.720,0:44:48.420
tech" would be a lot easier and probably[br]less fraught and contentious. But things
0:44:48.420,0:44:54.529
like demilitarization, supply chain[br]justice, basic social equity, workplace
0:44:54.529,0:45:00.519
fairness, public reconciliation - I'm[br]giving US examples here - reparations,
0:45:00.519,0:45:07.830
land back. And obviously the one that's[br]coming for all of us, climate, is going to
0:45:07.830,0:45:12.609
be the biggest problem. It already is the[br]biggest problem in terms of, you know,
0:45:12.609,0:45:20.319
racial and economic and environmental[br]justice worldwide. So in conclusion, my
0:45:20.319,0:45:25.409
little take home slogan is that there's no[br]hack or tech audit for justice, but there
0:45:25.409,0:45:31.269
are these different levels and you can work[br]on one and work on another, but you can't
0:45:31.269,0:45:37.069
solve the really big stuff in the sort of[br]tech domain. And that's not a shortcoming,
0:45:37.069,0:45:42.640
and it's not for lack of trying. That is[br]all. I'm very happy to quit talking so
0:45:42.640,0:45:48.099
much and move to Q&A. Thank you so much[br]for your attention. Thanks.
0:45:48.099,0:45:52.099
Herald: All right. Thank you.[br]Dunbar-Hester: Thank you.
0:45:52.099,0:46:02.289
Herald: All right, everyone, questions on[br]Twitter, Mastodon, #rc3-two on IRC. We
0:46:02.289,0:46:06.350
wait for a little bit and ask the[br]questions in the meantime. So this
0:46:06.350,0:46:12.209
research for this book, when[br]did you actually do it, like timewise?
0:46:12.209,0:46:18.359
Dunbar-Hester: Yeah, it started, it[br]actually, we were talking before we had an
0:46:18.359,0:46:23.450
audience a little bit about radio. And my[br]earlier project was about people building
0:46:23.450,0:46:30.430
radio stations and - try to be brief - but[br]they had a very emancipatory set of ideas
0:46:30.430,0:46:35.000
about what it meant to teach people how to[br]build electronics or solder a transmitter
0:46:35.000,0:46:39.880
board or something. But they kept running[br]into some of these patterns of exclusion
0:46:39.880,0:46:46.890
that I mentioned. And so it was actually[br]through them that I heard about these
0:46:46.890,0:46:51.490
conversations that were starting to happen[br]in and hacking and open source communities
0:46:51.490,0:46:56.809
where people were trying to directly head-[br]on confront some of this stuff. So I think
0:46:56.809,0:47:03.190
I heard about it in around the 2006 era,[br]started working on it, maybe... It's about
0:47:03.190,0:47:09.259
2010 to about 2015, is the period[br]that I was actively, you know, going to
0:47:09.259,0:47:14.039
conferences and meet-ups and spaces and[br]interviewing people. So it's this sort of
0:47:14.039,0:47:17.900
snapshot. Yeah, that's the shortest[br]answer. Thanks.
0:47:17.900,0:47:22.710
Herald: All right. That's very interesting[br]because I kept thinking if you had
0:47:22.710,0:47:26.859
encountered this sort of rise of the alt-[br]right or something like this, because I
0:47:26.859,0:47:31.489
feel like in the last couple of years,[br]these discussions have just become so much
0:47:31.489,0:47:35.470
more radicalized and not from the left,[br]but from the right, like where you can
0:47:35.470,0:47:39.839
basically no longer talk about this[br]without just all hell breaking loose.
0:47:39.839,0:47:41.980
Right?[br]Dunbar-Hester: I think that's a really
0:47:41.980,0:47:46.829
interesting point. And I think you're[br]right. This does, I mean, I was finishing
0:47:46.829,0:47:51.460
the book during the Trump era over here,[br]and I know you've got your own counterparts
0:47:51.460,0:47:58.099
in Europe, but this is all very much within[br]that kind of Obama liberal, neo liberal
0:47:58.099,0:48:03.395
framing. And actually something I wrote[br]about, I think it's in the intro of the
0:48:03.395,0:48:10.589
book, is the Obama White House had a women[br]in STEM, as part of a women and people of
0:48:10.589,0:48:17.029
color in STEM, as part of a kind of[br]national security and a nationalist agenda
0:48:17.029,0:48:23.109
basically on their page. And the Trump[br]administration took it down. So I think,
0:48:23.109,0:48:33.130
and also in the book, there's a discussion[br]of a channel for Polish Python users where
0:48:33.130,0:48:38.630
they were like fretting about how to ban[br]Nazis from the channel and whether Nazis
0:48:38.630,0:48:44.859
were just people showing up and throwing[br]swastikas all over the IRC channel,
0:48:44.859,0:48:49.950
whether that was "trolling" or whether it[br]was real Nazis. And, yes, I think the sort
0:48:49.950,0:48:59.609
of stakes of some of this has gotten a lot[br]more stark. And so in certain ways,
0:48:59.609,0:49:04.180
the sort of "which side are you on?"-[br]questions are easier, but the sort of
0:49:04.180,0:49:10.890
depth of what's at stake and what's being[br]defended is maybe harder. So, yeah, the
0:49:10.890,0:49:16.650
political context is sort of[br]temporal is really is part of this, yeah.
0:49:16.650,0:49:22.819
Herald: All right. Now we turn to the IRC.[br]Have you looked into the woman in FLOSS as
0:49:22.819,0:49:28.460
perhaps being one with predominantly[br]engineers as mothers/fathers?
0:49:28.460,0:49:33.081
Dunbar-Hester: Sorry, could you repeat[br]women in FLOSS ...?
0:49:33.081,0:49:37.039
Herald: I think the question is whether[br]you have sort of noticed a pattern that
0:49:37.039,0:49:41.970
women that get into these spaces, sort of,[br]by their parents, have encountered
0:49:41.970,0:49:46.450
engineering, I think it's a familiar[br]context.
0:49:46.450,0:49:53.230
Dunbar-Hester: Yes, I have not personally[br]done research on that, but it does,
0:49:53.230,0:50:03.230
y'know, sort of other historical and[br]sociological research shows that people
0:50:03.230,0:50:11.710
who are exposed at a young age,[br]that's part of the differential. And even,
0:50:11.710,0:50:18.250
even in households where, say, a computer[br]came home early on, we're talking about a
0:50:18.250,0:50:23.950
slightly older generation. A computer came[br]home early on because parents brought it
0:50:23.950,0:50:30.520
into the house. You know, boys were more[br]likely to sort of claim it as theirs or
0:50:30.520,0:50:35.039
take time on it or start playing with it[br]even a couple or a few years earlier than
0:50:35.039,0:50:39.760
girls. And so, yeah, I haven't looked at[br]that, the sort of life narratives
0:50:39.760,0:50:44.359
directly, but other people have. And I[br]draw on that. And that's also something I
0:50:44.359,0:50:50.440
am hearing now from people who are adults[br]and are thinking about these problems and
0:50:50.440,0:50:58.690
how they want to not have their own kids[br]encounter the same problems or sort of
0:50:58.690,0:51:02.309
legacy of division. You definitely hear[br]people saying, "I want this to get solved
0:51:02.309,0:51:07.240
so my daughter doesn't have a hard time."[br]But that's a little outside of what
0:51:07.240,0:51:12.660
I've looked at, but it feeds in, yeah.[br]Herald: All right. All right. This is a
0:51:12.660,0:51:16.470
slightly longer question. I'll try to do[br]my best: I've witnessed a lot of white
0:51:16.470,0:51:24.150
feminism in FOSS, that's free open source[br]software, right? And FOSS diversity, equity
0:51:24.150,0:51:30.290
and inclusions. DEI Spaces. Is[br]intersectionality sufficiently recognized
0:51:30.290,0:51:35.570
as an issue in FOSS feminism, or is it[br]actually worse off due to the low number
0:51:35.570,0:51:39.150
of women in FOSS, around 2%.
0:51:39.150,0:51:45.769
Dunbar-Hester: Great. Yeah. So I couldn't.[br]At first I would flag that the numbers in
0:51:45.769,0:51:52.009
FOSS have started to change. There's later[br]research that shows that they're up some.
0:51:52.009,0:51:56.920
The question about white feminism is a[br]really good one. And I do write in the
0:51:56.920,0:52:08.309
book about people sort of grappling with[br]that. And so the sort of trajectory was
0:52:08.309,0:52:18.099
the first category that people started to[br]notice of exclusion was women, and I think
0:52:18.099,0:52:27.180
I discussed how women opened up pretty[br]quickly to being non essentialist and
0:52:27.180,0:52:32.489
again, inclusive of trans and non binary[br]sorts of identities. But I think that the
0:52:32.489,0:52:39.539
race and the what I sometimes talk about[br]is sort of global positioning, the Global
0:52:39.539,0:52:46.799
North hackers in Europe and North America.[br]It is harder, I think, for them to sort of
0:52:46.799,0:52:55.520
deal as head on with, you know, race. And[br]I mean, these are fundamental questions of
0:52:55.520,0:53:04.460
racial capitalism. And so being positioned[br]within fairly well advantaged Global North
0:53:04.460,0:53:10.080
communities, it is harder to confront some[br]of those issues. I think there's a
0:53:10.080,0:53:15.359
consciousness of it, but I would say it's[br]a lot. What I observed was a lot greater
0:53:15.359,0:53:22.829
awareness and sort of development of[br]potential solutions for being inclusive of
0:53:22.829,0:53:31.650
women than a sort of really broadly[br]intersectional notion of women, including
0:53:31.650,0:53:37.980
people in Global South positions and in[br]racialized categories in the Global North.
0:53:37.980,0:53:43.049
And again, I think there's been a[br]sort of probably a shift in attention to
0:53:43.049,0:53:49.789
that, some of which postdates the[br]period in the book. But I also think that
0:53:49.789,0:53:54.930
that it's uniquely hard, I think, to[br]solve in volunturistic groups because the
0:53:54.930,0:54:00.180
forces, at least in the US and I would[br]speculate in Europe as well, like the
0:54:00.180,0:54:10.100
forces that cause inequality and[br]segregation. And, you know, like the tech
0:54:10.100,0:54:13.079
industry is a really good place to see[br]these contradictions, like what's going on
0:54:13.079,0:54:22.440
now with, like Google and the firing of Dr[br]Timnit Gebru is. You know, places where
0:54:22.440,0:54:30.339
there's a sort of capitalistic incentive[br]are not going to be able to solve these
0:54:30.339,0:54:34.730
problems of inequality because the profit[br]motive is always going to be there to
0:54:34.730,0:54:43.269
build surveillance tech, to assist[br]countries and that want to
0:54:43.269,0:54:49.200
build prisons. Again, this is what's[br]coming with climate stuff. And so saying,
0:54:49.200,0:54:55.420
oh, you need to hire more black women or[br]something is like running smack into these
0:54:55.420,0:54:59.319
contradictions. And this is part of why I[br]say this really can't be solved within
0:54:59.319,0:55:03.010
tech. And these are very big, thorny[br]issues. Another thing the final thing I'll
0:55:03.010,0:55:10.099
point out this is sort of rambling is for[br]a voluntaristic group, it's gonna be
0:55:10.099,0:55:15.960
easier to make fairly small interventions.[br]And so I think that that's. I actually
0:55:15.960,0:55:20.140
have somebody talking about this, like if[br]we make the space more inclusive to
0:55:20.140,0:55:28.200
anybody and say bad behavior isn't here or[br]isn't welcome here, you know, that can hit
0:55:28.200,0:55:32.680
a note where it might cause there to be a[br]sort of more inclusive community that
0:55:32.680,0:55:36.319
would be welcoming to a bunch of different[br]kinds of folks. But it's not necessarily
0:55:36.319,0:55:44.380
realistic to tailor in a voluntaristic group[br]that's more a response to the sort of forms
0:55:44.380,0:55:50.239
of exclusion all the kinds of[br]different people have experienced. And so,
0:55:50.239,0:55:54.839
again, I think this is kind of a question[br]of scale, but I really do think that the
0:55:54.839,0:56:00.220
sort of way that voluntaristic groups,[br]i.e. not the market, not workplaces,
0:56:00.220,0:56:06.160
articulate, you know, what they think the[br]problems are and how
0:56:06.160,0:56:09.619
they can sort of begin to talk about[br]solutions are really important precisely
0:56:09.619,0:56:18.729
because they're not hamstrung by the same[br]contradictions that for profit spaces are.
0:56:18.729,0:56:23.770
That was a long ... That's a really great[br]question. I do take it up. Some are the
0:56:23.770,0:56:26.950
people I was writing about. I think we're[br]starting to take it up. It's probably
0:56:26.950,0:56:31.030
more full throated now. And it's very[br]complicated.
0:56:31.030,0:56:34.049
Herald: Yes, all of these things.[br]Dunbar-Hester: Yeah.
0:56:34.049,0:56:39.191
Herald: Alright, we do have an interesting[br]question: "Would you advise people to try
0:56:39.191,0:56:45.569
to change communities from within or just[br]start new structures with more intersexual
0:56:45.569,0:56:47.759
spaces?"[br]Dunbar-Hester: I don't have a great answer
0:56:47.759,0:56:57.869
to that. I think it is kind of the[br]pressing question of the day, I think in a
0:56:57.869,0:57:10.819
lot of a lot of spaces, and I see good[br]answers on both sides, and I think it
0:57:10.819,0:57:23.029
depends perhaps. I do see a virtue in[br]some space being set aside, but how that a
0:57:23.029,0:57:30.569
separate space chooses to interface with a[br]sort of wider space is going to vary. And
0:57:30.569,0:57:33.709
I don't think, I don't think it's[br]necessarily a binary like you're either
0:57:33.709,0:57:39.530
totally outside or you're within having a,[br]you know, a big discussion about how to be
0:57:39.530,0:57:44.660
maximally inclusive. I think those things[br]are always kind of dialogically happening.
0:57:44.660,0:57:49.770
But I've seen people argue both sides of[br]it, and I've seen, I think, compelling
0:57:49.770,0:57:58.740
answers on both sides of it. But, yeah, it[br]is kind of the place where the idea that
0:57:58.740,0:58:06.119
we're sort of all taking up this project[br]together can start to, you know, break
0:58:06.119,0:58:10.349
down. And some people think you're really[br]losing. A lot of people go off and stop,
0:58:10.349,0:58:19.240
you know, working together as some sort of[br]unified group. And so, yeah, I don't
0:58:19.240,0:58:22.930
have a great answer that. I do write[br]about it in the book. And I would say it
0:58:22.930,0:58:25.940
depends on what the goals are. I think[br]having some separate space is probably
0:58:25.940,0:58:30.031
important in any event.[br]Herald: Yeah, it seems like it is like
0:58:30.031,0:58:34.700
these kind of hackerspace have at least[br]the advantage of being able to accommodate
0:58:34.700,0:58:39.680
sort of subgroups, right. So you can have[br]these certain events, certain working
0:58:39.680,0:58:44.670
groups that can focus on these issues. For[br]example, I think our host today, the xHain
0:58:44.670,0:58:49.990
hackerspace in Berlin, just started this[br]talk series "Gespräch unter Bäumen", which
0:58:49.990,0:58:54.820
is just "Talks below the trees", they have[br]a LED tree in their hackerspace, and it
0:58:54.820,0:58:58.109
just sort of naturally happened that it[br]had only women as speakers and it was just
0:58:58.109,0:59:02.369
this lovely natural evolution of just[br]having much more interesting topics and
0:59:02.369,0:59:07.539
not just, you know, the traditional male[br]hacker kind of topics. So I think it's
0:59:07.539,0:59:11.069
really cool. And you just have this[br]ability to have these initiatives inside
0:59:11.069,0:59:20.890
existing spaces somehow, but - just a rant[br]from my side. Someone had a question, the
0:59:20.890,0:59:24.020
title of the book is just "Hacking[br]Diversity", right? I think we mentioned
0:59:24.020,0:59:26.770
this at the beginning.[br]Dunbar-Hester: Yeah, I think the whole
0:59:26.770,0:59:31.160
title, if you look for hacking diversity,[br]you'll find it. My name, Princeton
0:59:31.160,0:59:38.970
University Press. Yeah. I'll not be[br]shameless and say it's on very deep sale
0:59:38.970,0:59:44.319
right now. If you were to buy it from[br]Princeton directly, there's a discount
0:59:44.319,0:59:52.660
code and it's on my Twitter. It's I think[br]it's "H - D - E - V - S" anyway - it's
0:59:52.660,0:59:55.579
40% percent off through like February.[br]Herald: Nice.
0:59:55.579,0:59:59.680
Dunbar-Hester: Yeah. It's very affordable.[br]Herald: Alright, can you comment on how
0:59:59.680,1:00:03.950
structures like GitHub that predominantly[br]value codes and missions and other highly
1:00:03.950,1:00:08.880
formalized tasks over community building[br]and less technical contributions play into
1:00:08.880,1:00:15.549
this nexus?[br]Dunbar-Hester: Yes, absolutely. I mean,
1:00:15.549,1:00:21.569
historically, the focus on the[br]artifact, what you could produce, the
1:00:21.569,1:00:30.530
code, even hardware, has taken on this[br]sort of exalted, symbolic meaning, and it
1:00:30.530,1:00:36.079
has definitely contributed to both the[br]denigration and the invisibility of people
1:00:36.079,1:00:43.089
who weren't doing that kind of work and[br]who might be doing community building or
1:00:43.089,1:00:50.259
even things documentation or translation,[br]right? With it's being global practices
1:00:50.259,1:00:56.150
that the sort of authors of the code are[br]getting the sort of priesthood
1:00:56.150,1:01:00.781
status and everyone else is sort of lower.[br]I think, again, awareness of that is
1:01:00.781,1:01:08.650
starting to change, but it's definitely[br]contributed to again historical sense that
1:01:08.650,1:01:14.940
there was underrepresentation of some[br]kinds of folks. And I think there are ways
1:01:14.940,1:01:22.490
you can, it sort of starts with raising[br]awareness of this. But again, that sort of
1:01:22.490,1:01:28.849
signal, the celebration of the the[br]technologist is coming in from all these
1:01:28.849,1:01:35.069
other places in the culture. And so[br]deprogramming that or something, as it
1:01:35.069,1:01:41.670
were, is is tough, but not impossible. And[br]again, I see that, I see that actually, at
1:01:41.670,1:01:48.470
least here as part of the sort of bigger[br]cultural war. And, you know, the idea that
1:01:48.470,1:01:55.269
the sort of tech is the, you know, godly[br]apparatus and everything else is, you
1:01:55.269,1:02:02.099
know, humanities and squishy soft stuff we[br]don't need that's going to fall away.
1:02:02.099,1:02:08.190
Yeah, it doesn't have to be as big of[br]a topic as that, but that's again, it's
1:02:08.190,1:02:12.630
all kind of in there. I don't know if[br]that answered a question, but, yes, that's
1:02:12.630,1:02:18.219
there. And I think that's something that[br]the first step in addressing it can be
1:02:18.219,1:02:24.349
acknowledging it and and building forms of[br]collaboration and that are not just sort
1:02:24.349,1:02:30.039
of like nominally non hierarchical, but[br]specifically raising visibility and
1:02:30.039,1:02:33.130
sort of credit giving to other kinds of[br]contributions.
1:02:33.130,1:02:38.109
Herald: So do you feel as someone that is[br]actually a science and technology scholar
1:02:38.109,1:02:43.150
that this feels as like is finally getting[br]recognized as something that exists and is
1:02:43.150,1:02:47.190
real? Because I always have this impression[br]that people just assume this doesn't exist
1:02:47.190,1:02:51.560
and no one thinks about this except them[br]and there is an entire academic field
1:02:51.560,1:02:56.270
about it. Do you think this is changing or[br]is it just to say?
1:02:56.270,1:03:01.469
Dunbar-Hester: I don't know. I mean, I[br]think that there's a there's a lot of
1:03:01.469,1:03:11.540
visibility on the one hand and even, you[br]know, something in the US with and who
1:03:11.540,1:03:17.150
knows what will be happening after COVID,[br]but, you know, public school systems were
1:03:17.150,1:03:23.260
having their budgets cut after the first[br]financial crisis in 2008. And one of the
1:03:23.260,1:03:27.450
things that was being proposed was moving[br]a hackerspace into a high school and sort
1:03:27.450,1:03:35.210
of having that, you know, come forward and[br]do things that institutions had maybe once
1:03:35.210,1:03:45.559
been doing. I think that that again, I'll[br]keep coming back to the tension between
1:03:45.559,1:03:52.130
what I think some of the most interesting[br]voluntaristic and politicized sort of
1:03:52.130,1:03:58.869
goals for these kinds of activities, them,[br]versus what the market wants them to do,
1:03:58.869,1:04:06.219
are, are sort of in tension. And there was[br]a moment where I was interviewing someone,
1:04:06.219,1:04:12.269
maybe and I want to say 2012, and I was[br]asking him questions about free software
1:04:12.269,1:04:16.799
and he was very kind but he said something[br]like, "Why are you asking me about free
1:04:16.799,1:04:24.010
software? Like that's dead.", you know,[br]like Open Source 1.0 - sort of. And I'm
1:04:24.010,1:04:31.460
not the only person who's written about[br]that at all, but I think this sort of idea
1:04:31.460,1:04:38.160
that there's something here that can't[br]just be, you know, co-opted by a market
1:04:38.160,1:04:45.170
like that's the hard part and, I mean. I[br]think there is a lot of there's continuing
1:04:45.170,1:04:50.480
to be a lot of attention to hackathons and[br]coding bootcamps and these kinds of
1:04:50.480,1:04:58.819
things. But I don't know, I guess I'm sort[br]of too inside and outside at the same time
1:04:58.819,1:05:02.420
to have a good answer. I think that[br]there's a well-established body of
1:05:02.420,1:05:09.829
scholarly recognition of these activities.[br]People look at me less weird talking about
1:05:09.829,1:05:17.650
this than a book about radio in the twenty[br]first century. But I think the sort of,
1:05:17.650,1:05:25.650
you know, really sustained work to sort of[br]disarticulate, disentangle some of this
1:05:25.650,1:05:30.369
from industry where it's getting the sort[br]of most not just attention, but the sort
1:05:30.369,1:05:36.650
of celebration and the ways that that can[br]kind of distort, I think, some of the
1:05:36.650,1:05:39.839
other intentions that is is always going[br]to be tough.
1:05:39.839,1:05:44.549
Herald: Allright. Wonderful. I think we're[br]out of time. So thank you very much.
1:05:44.549,1:05:50.519
Everyone, buy the book. And have a good[br]night. Bye, bye.
1:05:50.519,1:05:53.549
Dunbar-Hester: Good day.[br]Thank you so much. Thank you.
1:05:53.549,1:05:55.619
Herald: Thank you.
1:05:55.619,1:05:57.959
postroll music
1:05:58.539,1:06:03.069
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