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<i>rc3 preroll music</i>

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Herald: All right, so our next talk is
called Hacking Diversity, where we

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basically try to treat a really awkward
question about these spaces that we move

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in here, which is that we really have
these ideas about inclusion and diversity.

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But in the end, most of the people that
come just look like me. And in open

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source, most people look like me. And this
is extremely strange, right? Because we

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have all these ideas about diversity and
everything. And today we try to answer the

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question of why this happens and maybe
what we can do about it. Our speaker for

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this is Professor Christina Dunbar-Hester.
She's a professor at the University of

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Southern California, I think. And today
she is preparing, uh, she is showing

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essentially a condensed version of a book
that she just wrote, called Hacking

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Diversity. And I'm really looking forward
to this talk because I also have asked

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myself these questions and I don't know 
the answers.

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So I'm looking forward to this.
Please Christina.

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Professor Christina Dunbar-Hester: Thank
you so much. Thank you for the

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introduction and thank you for the
invitation and thank you for all of your

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labor to get this remote experience off
the ground. So I'm really happy and

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excited to be here, whatever that is. And
I will get into the talk. Let's see here,

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OK. Let me know, you should be able to see
slides now. If that didn't work, let me

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know. OK, thanks. This is not a best
practices talk so much as a first

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principles and how did we get here talk?
My examples are mostly from the US, but

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they are part of a broader Euro-American
milieu. And so to get started, I think I

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want to put up this quote from the Free
Software Foundation from 2012. And the

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goal of this talk is really to give some
context. And I think at the almost very

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end of 2020 it's safe to say that this is
a fairly mainstream and uncontroversial

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topic, but it wasn't always this way. So
the quote says: "The free software

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movement needs diverse participation to
achieve its goals. If we want to make

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proprietary software extinct, we need to
make everyone on the planet engage with

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free software. To get there we need people
of all genders, races, sexual orientations

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and abilities leading the way. And as I
said, I think this is a very recognizable

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sort of discourse now, but it hasn't
always been. And I'm going to sort of

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unpack this for a little while. The
outline of the talk, this is a pretty bare

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bones outline, but there's going to be a
lot of sort of history and context and

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then a little bit about the value and goal
of diversity and how it relates to profits

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and markets and also the goal of diversity
and how it relates to other values,

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particularly justice. And I want to note
that there's a couple of content warning

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slides on here. One, for people who have
been involved in promulgating genocide and

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another for a person who's been ejected
from hacking for abusive behavior. And so

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there will be a warning preceding each of
those. OK, so first, talking about

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genocide. In the 19th century in the
United States and even into the 20th

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century, there was an idea of a sort of
frontiersmen, brawny man who you can see

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here. This is a folk hero, but was
important enough to still be being

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represented on television in the 1960s. 
And the sort of consistent thing

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here is going to actually go, this is the
genocide one, to these sort of consistent

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representations. You can see these folks
are wearing, well, they're men and they're

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being manly and they're wearing animal
hide with the implication that they maybe,

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you know, shot the deer themself. They
carry a gun, they're in naturalistic

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settings. They're sort of rough and ready
for anything. I'm drawing here on

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historian Susan Douglas, who argues that
around the turn of the 20th century,

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society started to change. And so even
though there was still this mythos of this

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brawny frontiersmen, what society actually
needed was a reconfigured masculinity that

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didn't sort of have this rough physical
brawny masculinity. And so masculinity

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itself, she says, was reconfigured to what
she calls technical masculinity. And so

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the masculinity was sort of refashioned to
be about mastery over machines and

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particularly these sort of new cutting
edge electronic machines, which in this

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case was radio. So radio experimentation
in the very early 20th century, first

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wireless telegraphy and then later
wireless sound transmission, which became

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broadcasting, she argues, is a way to sort
of refit masculinity or the way the

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society was changing. It was more urban.
There was more specialized division of

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labor needing people to work in a
professional white collar fields with

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technology as opposed to going out and
settling the West. And so here we see

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technical, technical masculinity,
entrainment basically, a father with his

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very young son teaching him this is a way
to be in the world. And Douglas argues

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that this started with ham radio in the
early 20th century. But perhaps

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unsurprisingly, it continued to sort of
persist over time. And so my next few

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slides are showing the same technical
masculinity, which is about, you know,

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curiosity, solving a problem, you know,
expressing your will with technology only

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with different sorts of technical
artifacts. And so here this is the Model

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Railroad, made very famous in Steven
Levy's book about hackers. We also have,

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and this is probably about the 1950s. 
We have phone phreaking in the 1960s

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and here this is also a 2600 
magazine from the 80s, sort

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of continuing to mythologize phone
phreaking. Going into the 70s, we

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see this with computers, the Homebrew
Computer Club, a really important hobbyist

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formation for both, you know, the history
of Silicon Valley, but also the history of

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hacking and free software. It was people
who were sort of building and tinkering

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and experimenting. And so what we're
starting to see here is even as the tech

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shifts, the technical masculinity stays
consistent. And this is probably the early

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80s and the slide is just an ad for a
microcomputer. But we can see not only the

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representation of masculinity at the
center, we also see femininity in relation

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to the technology, which is to say it's
just the sort of ancillary handmaiden for

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the sort of male agent here. And as I
said, this is certainly a really cheesy

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ad, but I think, I hope underscores the
sort of consistent promulgation of this

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relationship with technology. And so I 
want to suggest is that tech here over the

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20th and into the 21st century is not just
reflecting a legacy of division, of which

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gender prescription, gender roles are a
part of this, but is actually actively

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been involved in enforcing this. And so
we've got basically a white patriarchal,

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Christian, native-born supremacy, and a
global system of racial capitalism. And so

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I've shown you who's sort of at the top of
this hierarchy. We've got colonized

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subjects, immigrants, women, rural and
lower class people, indigenous people

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coming out on the bottom. And both
builders and consumers of tech are

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implicated in this tension. OK, so going
back even further in the history to sort

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of where some of this comes from. I'm not
sure how many of you thought that in a

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discussion of hacking you'd be looking at
a 19th century American oil painting. But

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here we are. This is called American
Progress. So I think mythologized American

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progress from the late 19th century. And
as you can probably see, there's a real

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sort of light to dark element of the 
photo, of the picture, the painting. And we

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have this maiden who's really not so much
a person, but more like a God, this is

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sort of Greek iconography, sort of up
above everyone, up above man. And we do

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see technology in the painting. We see
the railroads and some ships on the right

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hand side, which is the east. And so you
can tell that she's sort of presiding over

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everybody, settling the west. And again,
they're bringing the light, which is

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civilization. The maiden herself is
actually carrying a book which symbolizes

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knowledge and what may not be obvious, but
she's actually got telegraph wire strung

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around her arm. And then you can see the
telegraph pattern behind her. And so this

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control over technology is part of how
white settler, you know, newly arrived

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Americans are maintaining or sort of
promoting and maintaining dominance over

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their new continent, their new continent.
And you can actually see, so we've

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got these white settler folks in the
center of the painting. All the way in the

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dark are indigenous people. And there's
also actually a bear. So they're sort of,

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again, a biblical hierarchy of man over
the beasts. And you can tell that the

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indigenous subjects and the bear are
probably either going to get run out of

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the frame or sort of forced to become
civilized. So this is very deep in how

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American sort of hierarchy and notions of
dominance get promoted and, you know, sort

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of renewed over time. And this is
interesting because this ideology is so

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strong that it's actually succeeded in
basically erasing some of the historical

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record. Like, for instance, we know that
there were women, highly skilled women

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operators in World War 2 operating the
first electronic computers. This is ENIAC

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in the US. But they were still, they were
sort of written out of the record and

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computing, once it became popular and moved
out of a top secret military project, the

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womens' roles were basically effaced and
credit for dominance over and sort of

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control over the new technology publicly
went to men. And again, so we see this

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sort of sorting happening in all these
different ways, even in defiance of the

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actual historical record. Another
instance, which may be kind of surprising

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is this is a really wonderful article by
Lisa Nakamura that I'm drawing from here.

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This is a Fairchild Semiconductor, so
they're based in Silicon Valley, they used

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to make microchips and associated
equipment in Silicon Valley, but they had

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an intermediate period before outsourcing
that stuff to Asia, where they opened

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operations on a Navajo reservation in the
American Southwest. And so there's really

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interesting ways in which race and gender
basically become resources for valuing the

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labor of some kind of people more and
other kinds of people less. So this

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reservation is attractive because regular
American labor laws didn't obtain and they

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also, managers in their minds, thought, oh
there's this history of Navajo weaving and

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sort of fine fabrication work. And so
there's a sort of stereotype that nonwhite

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people, particularly women, particularly
in this day and age, Asian, have "nimble

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fingers" and are going to be really good
and diligent at something that we need,

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like electronics assembly, to be really
sort of diligently done. And so what we've

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got here is the sort of overlay of Navajo
weaving and microchip. So Nakamura calls

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this insourcing, sort of outsourcing
before outsourcing. And, you know, now

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those laboratories and factories have
mostly moved to Asia. But this sort of

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period of experimentation with trying to,
like, alienate the labor from the sort of

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managerial home. And so now we would
think, like, you know, your Apple products

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as assembled in China, designed in
Cupertino or whatever. But that kind of

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thing, this is a sort of early moment of
that. And so, again, I want to sort of

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underscore that race and gender are a
resource for global capitalism to assign

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worth to some people's bodies and work and
not to others. Another way that this

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works, I don't know how much people in the
US will remember this, let alone outside

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of the US, but this is a student, a high
school student who is a Sudanese American,

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I believe, who was, you know, a geek. And
he was enthusiastic about doing a DIY

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electronics assembly at home where he
built a clock and he brought it to school

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and the school called police. And so here
we can see that whiteness has been a

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resource for avoiding criminalization for
certain kinds of sort of hacky

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activities. I'm certainly not saying that
no white people have been criminalized for

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hacking because that's not true. But
certain activities get more of a pass

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based on who's participating in them. And
I also want to point out that this legacy

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of division and this system of social
sorting is flexible. In 2015, it

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could easily be turned to islamophobic
purposes, which is what happened here. And

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so what I want to point out is there's
a sort of like, you know, history of

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division and really sort of policing who's
in bounds and who's out of bounds for the

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most celebrated category of technological
agent, but I also want to sort of

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introduce the idea that this is not
inconsistent in a way with diversity as a

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market value. Capitalism is actually happy
to affirm difference if it can help sell

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something, even though here we also see
the sort of, you know, cultural and even

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legal system being brought to bear to
punish certain forms of difference. OK, so

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at this point, this kind of statement is
really ubiquitous. This is from 2012 from

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a TechCrunch post. In my mind, the
women in tech discussion should really be

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framed as having different people with
different experiences and different

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outlooks helps you build a better product.
So this is a pretty different framing of

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difference than the one I just showed you.
But the point is capitalism is

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actually able to sort of reconcile these
in these contradictions in a way. And you

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can also see this is my name tag from a
Google sponsored event I attended for work

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for this book. And they're not only saying
we need women to help us build a better

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product, they're also reflecting back this
sort of symbol of femininity, you know, the

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pink Venus sign, which, of course, turns a
lot of people off. But it's you know, if

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you're thinking about marketing, it's a
way to symbolize this inclusion. Right?

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Now, I'm going to put up the only horribly
academic slide I have for the whole talk.

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This is a quote from Herman Gray who says,
"Abstract notions of rights and freedom

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and their expansion to new subjects elide
the social salience of race and gender as

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a basis of inequality even as it
culturally recognizes and celebrates

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differences." So here we can see the
market is happy to recognize and celebrate

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difference, to sort of take up, you know,
women in tech or whatever, while sort of

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papering over and doing nothing to unseat
the sort of core, which is that race and

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gender are bases of inequality. So you can
sort of have this lip service, abstract

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expansion of, you know, new identities.
But what is sort of always intact is even

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if you're sort of bringing one group over
and saying, oh, you know, you're part of

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the dominant group, now, in some way.
The system of sorting is remaining intact

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and in a less abstract way. Like in the US
this summer, there is huge Black Lives

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Matter protests, uprisings. And pretty
quickly, all these companies started

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saying, oh, yes, Black Lives Matter, we
support this. You know, Amazon was really

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prominent among them. And yet Amazon
doesn't stop to question whether or not

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it's exploiting racialized workforce
during Covid with warehouse work and

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delivery work. These are some of the
lowest paid workers. They are not getting

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health insurance. They're not getting
consistent hazard pay or protection. And

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they're dying at disproportionate rates.
But Amazon is very happy to say black

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lives matter as part of the PR. Similarly,
they're still basically building

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surveillance equipment, but there's no
inconsistency between the sort of

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recognition and celebration of difference
while working to continue to cement that

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difference and exploit that difference.
So all of this is to say is that diversity

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is, in my opinion, a rather toothless 
value to sort of attach to the work and

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the sort of meaning for what's at stake
with working with tech and with inclusion,

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too. Diversity can sort of bring
our attention to these patterns of social

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difference. But if it ends there, it can
actually kind of draw us in the wrong

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directions without the tools we might need
to, you know, actually make some of the

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more justice affirming points that I
think are why people are drawn to these

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topics in the first place. OK, so after
this digression, getting more some into

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how this relates to hacking and free
software. So I've established a sort of

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legacy of division. And I want to sort of
underscore that the hacking and free

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software milieu has had this commitment to
freedom and openness. That's definitely

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been at the core pretty consistently. But
historically, this has really had to do

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with, the freedom and openness has been
about controlling technology, some free

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speech of course. It's definitely about
the individual's exercise of freedom

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without necessarily a lot of thought about
who the individual is, who's maximally

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empowered to be free, or it's been about
individuals in collectives, but that are

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relatively small and relatively
homogenous. And so what I want to suggest

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is this sat within the bigger context of
tech and division, but without really

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acknowledging this, because the freedom of
the individual was presented as a sort of

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universal value. Even though in practice
it really, really wasn't. And I think

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around 15 to 20 years ago that really
started to change. When I started working

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on this project, there was already a good
deal of agitation forming some of these

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groups in free software and related
projects to especially draw attention to

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the sort of disparities around women and
Py Star was initially for sort of women,

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and it was was trans-inclusive and I think
pretty quickly this started as a women,

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but then it became often non-binary and
trans-inclusive, so not the sort of

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essentialist version of women. Something
happened in 2006 that really caused this

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topic to really spring to the fore in a
lot of these communities. There was an EU

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policy report that came out. So the
research was from 2004/2005 that showed

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that the rate of participation by women
and FLOSS was less than 2% and that was

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significantly less even than academic and
proprietary computer science. And so that,

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I think, really shocked people who had
maybe sort of intuitively known, oh, yeah,

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this isn't very representative, but that
number really galvanized a lot of

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conversations and got people started
talking and organizing basically in new

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ways. And so I'm now going to show just a
handful of sort of what this report

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caused, which is a bunch of conversations.
This is from the hackers on planet Earth

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Hope Conference in New York in 2006. And
it may not totally be clear what's going

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on here, but some folks had responded to
this statistic on the one hand and this

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quote from this United States senator who
had said something like, sort of gibberish

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about he was supposed to be considering
net neutrality and internet regulation,

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and he said something like, the internet
is a series of tubes. It's not a truck

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that you dump something on. And everybody
was making fun of him for not even, you

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know, understanding networked computing at
all. But these activists sort of put these

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together in a sort of mash-up. And they
were selling t-shirts, actually, that said

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"The Internet: A Series of Tubes". And as
you can see, that's a sort of textbook

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representation of a female reproductive
system. And so they just sort of brought

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this to the conference and they were
trying to force a conversation about it

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because they estimated, this is not an
official count, but they estimated that

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there were maybe, the ratio of women to 
men at Hope was like 1:40. And so they

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just wanted to force a conversation about
this. This is an artifact from a little bit

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later, 2014, about the rise of explicitly
dedicated feminist hacker spaces, and this

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is from the US and it's just a flyer for a
Zine-making workshop, which is again, a

249
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pretty mundane thing, but just the sort of
difference between the 2006 sort of flag

250
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planting and something a bit later where
there's actually a separate space here.

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And crucially, Zine-making isn't
necessarily in bounds with traditional

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hacking, but it is closer to sort of
strands of feminist consciousness raising

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and riot grrrl. And so there's a sort of
intermingling of these different kind of

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threads of DIY, basically. This is another
artifact from someone in Philadelphia who

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00:26:19,140 --> 00:26:25,840
was an artist and a designer and was
trying to find a way from the stuff that

256
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:34,370
she knew how to do with craft and sewing
and find a way into electronics and soft

257
00:26:34,370 --> 00:26:42,860
circuits and doing new things. And so she,
kind of for her own exploration, knitted a

258
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scarf using Ethernet cables. And for
her this was a kind of speculative object

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that was meant to help her find her way
into electronics, but also to kind of

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start conversations about why haven't
these things gotten together. Also seeing

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gatherings like this one, a more sort of
explicitly radicalized feminist hacking

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convergence. And I don't know if everybody
can read all the text, but it says

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"Trans Futuristic Cyborgs, anti-racist,
anti-sexist, gynepunk, DIY-DiWO - so taking

264
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DIY of a sort of heroic individualist to
doing it with others, making it more

265
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self-consciously collective and less
individualist self-reliant. It also says

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gender-hacking, anti-capitalism, libre
culture, technologies, bio-hacking. So

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again a sort of spectrum of politics and
interventions around hacking and feminist

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00:27:53,000 --> 00:28:00,950
hacking. And I'm going to dwell for a
moment on feminist servers. Haven't spent

269
00:28:00,950 --> 00:28:07,000
too much, haven't had too much text on
slides. But this one is. So these are

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artifacts that were on the one hand,
basically, like an independently

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maintained server run primarily by women-
identifying folks or non-masculine

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identifying folks running free software,
but they're also a sort of list of

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networking principles that gets out of
that more kind of literal artifactual mode

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into a more sort of speculative and
aspirational sort of politics of what it

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means to be doing this. And so the first
couple- it's actually a very long list and

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I only have a handful up here - the first
couple, I think, are very consonant with

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kind of mainstream hacking, wants networks
to be mutable and read-write accessible,

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and radically questions the conditions for
serving and service experiments with

279
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changing client-server relations. Those,
again, seem kind of axiomatic for

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mainstream hacking. But then the feminist
server starts to go in some other

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00:29:14,150 --> 00:29:19,321
directions; is autonomous in the sense
that she decides her own dependencies. I

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think this one's really interesting and
important. It's again, it's getting away

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00:29:23,090 --> 00:29:31,310
from this kind of heroic, individualistic
or almost sort of libertarian sense of

284
00:29:31,310 --> 00:29:36,450
autonomy. It's just the autonomy is about
deciding where you're dependent and being

285
00:29:36,450 --> 00:29:42,970
sort of transparent and open about that.
It's not about bootstrapping or being

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00:29:42,970 --> 00:29:48,930
individually self-sufficient; does not
strive for seamlessness, division of

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00:29:48,930 --> 00:29:53,740
labor; the not so fun stuff is made by
people. That's a feminist issue. That one,

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00:29:53,740 --> 00:29:59,240
I think is really important. A lot of
hacking that goes on in, say, a Global

289
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:07,750
North context is about the artifacts and
the practices in that moment. But here

290
00:30:07,750 --> 00:30:13,190
this is, if it's not clear, drawing
attention to where did that come from, it

291
00:30:13,190 --> 00:30:18,510
shouldn't be a seamless experience for you
not thinking about the pre-history, the

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00:30:18,510 --> 00:30:24,060
supply chain of this artifact, which
actually started with mining and

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00:30:24,060 --> 00:30:32,740
fabrication and assembly and shipping. And
will also have a post-use life, which

294
00:30:32,740 --> 00:30:40,770
might be recycling, might be very
hazardous reclaiming of precious metals

295
00:30:40,770 --> 00:30:47,110
by people without good labor protections,
or might not. But sort of instead of

296
00:30:47,110 --> 00:30:52,550
having this all be invisible, sort of
drawing it forward treats technology as

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00:30:52,550 --> 00:30:56,357
part of a social reality. This is a big
one, but it's really just sort of opening

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00:30:56,357 --> 00:31:02,120
up the space to acknowledge that legacy of
division that I was talking about earlier.

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And takes the risk of exposing her
insecurity. I like this one so much. It's

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00:31:07,580 --> 00:31:13,461
it's really evocative on a few levels. But
at the most sort of basic level, what I

301
00:31:13,461 --> 00:31:18,220
want to point out is that it's very
different than, again, a sort of threat or

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00:31:18,220 --> 00:31:24,220
a strand of hacking that's about owning
hard, or mastery or something. Instead,

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00:31:24,220 --> 00:31:33,760
it's being, you know, sort of present with
oneself and with others and disclosing

304
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:40,850
insecurities, which could be network
insecurities or personal ones. Right. So

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00:31:40,850 --> 00:31:45,720
it's taking what it means to be engaging
in hacking and all these new and sort of

306
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:51,710
mutated directions. One more example from
the sort of feminist hacking that I want

307
00:31:51,710 --> 00:31:58,600
to just tell you about for a second was
this exercise. I was at a feminist hacking

308
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:05,970
convergence in Montreal in 2016 and people
did a exercise in understanding public key

309
00:32:05,970 --> 00:32:14,440
cryptography as a dance where, you know,
instead of learning about this theory,

310
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:18,910
people actually tried to embody it. So
placing your body in the relationship with

311
00:32:18,910 --> 00:32:24,961
tech and often some of these things happen
in kind of explicitly separate spaces, but

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00:32:24,961 --> 00:32:30,850
going through the principles of
cryptography in a spontaneously

313
00:32:30,850 --> 00:32:36,600
choreographed dance and then performing it
all together. OK, so these are some of the

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00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:42,370
ways, the mutant strains of feminist
hacking. I don't want to suggest that this

315
00:32:42,370 --> 00:32:47,770
has been just a very linear and conflict-
free progression. And so I do want to

316
00:32:47,770 --> 00:32:54,700
dwell for a moment on just a single
instance of conflict, which probably

317
00:32:54,700 --> 00:32:58,367
the details will be unfamiliar, but there
might be a sort of wider recognition

318
00:32:58,367 --> 00:33:07,040
I think. So this is from a hackerspace in
Philadelphia in 2011 and a handful of

319
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:15,910
members of the space proposed holding an
event to hack sex toys, and they thought

320
00:33:15,910 --> 00:33:24,278
it was a pretty uncontroversial suggestion,
the same as having an Arduino night or a

321
00:33:24,278 --> 00:33:29,330
... you know, I'm making stuff up. But
they sort of put it out there as this:

322
00:33:29,330 --> 00:33:34,380
well, let's do this on the Saturday. And
they were really surprised when a bunch of

323
00:33:34,380 --> 00:33:39,250
other members of the space were very
opposed to it. And this is in the book.

324
00:33:39,250 --> 00:33:46,510
It's a design for a DIY flogger made from
a bicycle tube. And this was on the

325
00:33:46,510 --> 00:33:52,950
proposed sort of flier for the event. And
so what happened was they were really

326
00:33:52,950 --> 00:33:57,090
surprised that other people in the space
were sort of like, no, no, we don't want

327
00:33:57,090 --> 00:34:01,380
to have this here. We don't think it's
appropriate. And so here's a quote from

328
00:34:01,380 --> 00:34:09,230
one of the people who was opposing the
event. And he says: "A lot of the hackers

329
00:34:09,230 --> 00:34:14,260
here at the space are the Make Magazine/
Instructables type, not the Julian

330
00:34:14,260 --> 00:34:19,099
Assange HOPEconference attending type or
even the kind that cares much about a

331
00:34:19,099 --> 00:34:26,299
global movement of hacker spaces. I'm not
sure what category dildo-hacking falls in.

332
00:34:26,299 --> 00:34:33,570
For a lot of people, DIY has to do with
the sort of father-son nostalgia", end

333
00:34:33,570 --> 00:34:44,809
quote. So this is really interesting,
because we've got this acknowledgment of

334
00:34:44,809 --> 00:34:51,840
hacking being a variety of things, and
maybe again, for some people in a European

335
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:56,759
context where hacker spaces are often
more political, maybe this Make Magazine

336
00:34:56,759 --> 00:35:06,780
sort of home-project, personal fabrication
will be a little bit unrecognizable or

337
00:35:06,780 --> 00:35:13,280
even disappointing, but it is part of
hacking and making in the US. And then, of

338
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:19,619
course, there's the "information wants to
be free" HOPE-conference, lock-picking all

339
00:35:19,619 --> 00:35:25,880
these kinds of things, hacking that he
acknowledges. But he he says, I'm not sure

340
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:33,450
what dildo-hacking is, maybe suggesting
it's not even hacking at all. And then he

341
00:35:33,450 --> 00:35:37,359
says, for a lot of people, DIY has to do
with this father-son nostalgia, which I

342
00:35:37,359 --> 00:35:41,839
hope might make you think of the picture
I had up at the very beginning of the

343
00:35:41,839 --> 00:35:50,569
father-son with the radio apparatus. And
so it's really interesting that this sort

344
00:35:50,569 --> 00:35:55,309
of proposal that these people didn't think
of as being controversial turned into

345
00:35:55,309 --> 00:36:02,460
this, pretty full on argument about what
even hacking is in the sort of essential

346
00:36:02,460 --> 00:36:10,140
way. And so here's a reply from one of the
people who had proposed the workshop, and

347
00:36:10,140 --> 00:36:16,059
she says: "So my concern here is that it's
a hackerspace. Initiative shouldn't be

348
00:36:16,059 --> 00:36:21,289
punished, particularly initiative that
shakes up old patterns. Our space is

349
00:36:21,289 --> 00:36:26,109
really stratifying into hardware-tinkering
as the core interest , and white males as

350
00:36:26,109 --> 00:36:32,849
the demographic. I'm really frustrated.", 
end quote. And so this again, I assume

351
00:36:32,849 --> 00:36:41,849
that this is fairly recognizable to folks.
Right? If the core of what hacking is, is

352
00:36:41,849 --> 00:36:48,319
taking it upon yourself to take artifacts
and practices that you already know how to

353
00:36:48,319 --> 00:36:54,510
do in a new direction; like that's what
hacking is, according to a lot of people.

354
00:36:54,510 --> 00:36:58,299
And so she's really surprised and really
dismayed and really, I think felt very

355
00:36:58,299 --> 00:37:09,119
hurt and rejected that this was flaring as
controversy, and was really surprised that

356
00:37:09,119 --> 00:37:15,509
people were sort of raising the prospect
that dildo-hacking was interruption of

357
00:37:15,509 --> 00:37:24,769
a nostalgic father-son tech practice, that
was somehow offensive. Certainly, it seems

358
00:37:24,769 --> 00:37:30,810
like part of the problem might have been
the introduction of sexuality and maybe

359
00:37:30,810 --> 00:37:34,140
questions about whose sexuality;
sexuality that didn't seem to center

360
00:37:34,140 --> 00:37:40,539
straight men. What happened was this
didn't get resolved. The people who had

361
00:37:40,539 --> 00:37:48,170
proposed the workshop - included women,
men and non-binary people - actually left.

362
00:37:48,170 --> 00:37:55,750
They decamped to a new space that was
forming, that was forming with more kind

363
00:37:55,750 --> 00:38:01,420
of feminist hacking principles and
welcomed them there. And the first space

364
00:38:01,420 --> 00:38:08,100
stayed how they were and didn't have to
keep having conflicts and grapple with

365
00:38:08,100 --> 00:38:12,460
this kind of controversy anymore because
the people - and they weren't kicked out -

366
00:38:12,460 --> 00:38:22,559
but they decided to leave. And so, I know
these conflicts have been very painful and

367
00:38:22,559 --> 00:38:27,270
and alienating for people who have
experienced them, even though maybe the

368
00:38:27,270 --> 00:38:32,160
content of this one seems almost funny or
something in hindsight. But what I want to

369
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:40,450
propose is that part of why this has been
so difficult for people in these spaces is

370
00:38:40,450 --> 00:38:45,550
that people are actually wrestling with
this whole legacy of division that I laid

371
00:38:45,550 --> 00:38:50,890
out in the first part of the talk. So it
may feel like you're just having an

372
00:38:50,890 --> 00:38:56,690
argument with your fellow group members
who are a lot like you, but then you're

373
00:38:56,690 --> 00:39:02,819
breaking down along some kind of line that
you both can't cross over to with the

374
00:39:02,819 --> 00:39:12,920
other one. But there's a sort of really
deep sedimentary layer of who has been

375
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:22,289
anointed the sort of power of agency over
tech and for whom that has been sort of

376
00:39:22,289 --> 00:39:26,240
a taken for granted tacit assumption and
who's had to sort of assert their presence

377
00:39:26,240 --> 00:39:30,380
or their right to be there in different
ways. And so when there are these

378
00:39:30,380 --> 00:39:34,440
conflicts and flashpoints, all of that
stuff is there. And that's actually really

379
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:42,140
hard to solve anywhere. But it's very,
very hard to solve in elective

380
00:39:42,140 --> 00:39:47,140
volunteeristic associations, I think, also
so not not to say impossible, but there's

381
00:39:47,140 --> 00:39:56,520
a reason these conflicts are difficult.
OK, so returning to diversity and this is

382
00:39:56,520 --> 00:40:03,599
the same quote, I won't read it again, but
the sort of idea that women in tech are

383
00:40:03,599 --> 00:40:10,430
there to bring forward different
experiences and build a better product.

384
00:40:10,430 --> 00:40:14,150
Diversity is maybe necessary to start
these conversations, or the idea of

385
00:40:14,150 --> 00:40:20,170
diversity, but I don't think it's
sufficient for the purposes here. It's too

386
00:40:20,170 --> 00:40:26,440
easily sitting alongside market values,
which I think are not what people in

387
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:30,630
hackerspaces are primarily most
interested in. And that's not really why

388
00:40:30,630 --> 00:40:36,690
they're there. And it's also very easily
steered away from the important political

389
00:40:36,690 --> 00:40:42,799
work that I think people in hacking
communities often want to do. It can sort

390
00:40:42,799 --> 00:40:49,150
of mutate into this contradictory thing
where you've got sort of market values on

391
00:40:49,150 --> 00:40:54,170
the one hand, and something that isn't
what you set out to do on the other hand,

392
00:40:54,170 --> 00:40:57,940
and I'm going to illustrate that with this
somewhat more provocative example. This is

393
00:40:57,940 --> 00:41:04,730
a meme I stole from the internet. But the
point here is that you can make these

394
00:41:04,730 --> 00:41:10,520
diversity affirming slogans. And here
we've got "Black Lives Matter" and "Yes,

395
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:19,010
we can" and LGBT sort of flags or slogans
on a bomber. You can make these diversity

396
00:41:19,010 --> 00:41:24,739
affirming slogans fit within a system that
is fundamentally violent, carceral,

397
00:41:24,739 --> 00:41:30,410
militarized. It doesn't necessarily
challenge the system itself to bring

398
00:41:30,410 --> 00:41:36,479
forward individuals' identities as members
of marginalized groups. In fact,

399
00:41:36,479 --> 00:41:40,690
capitalism is actually quite happy to
resolve what might seem like contradiction

400
00:41:40,690 --> 00:41:46,300
here, by commodifying identity, selling
it as a brand without resolving the

401
00:41:46,300 --> 00:41:51,710
fundamental tensions that we know that are
here, that have to do with social power

402
00:41:51,710 --> 00:41:58,220
and dominance and exploitation. So coming
back to the free software quote from the

403
00:41:58,220 --> 00:42:04,990
beginning, as I said, this sort of hit
consensus, but I'm actually going to argue

404
00:42:04,990 --> 00:42:09,980
it's not really going far enough. Diverse
participation and making proprietary

405
00:42:09,980 --> 00:42:16,240
software extinct are fine, but I think
they actually do not fully capture what's

406
00:42:16,240 --> 00:42:21,640
at stake in these very tough conversations
that have been happening in hacking and

407
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:31,259
free software groups. And so, we might
think of this as, again, a point of entry,

408
00:42:31,259 --> 00:42:34,759
but we might want to take it a bit
farther. And this is as far as I'll go

409
00:42:34,759 --> 00:42:44,190
with prescriptions or how-to. So specific
in local voluntaristic communities that

410
00:42:44,190 --> 00:42:49,920
are either your hackerspace in the city
you live in or the the project that you...

411
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:55,749
that's distributed, but that you work on.
So articulate values and politics.

412
00:42:55,749 --> 00:43:01,839
Diversity is a good one. But I'm going to
say it's necessary and not sufficient. And

413
00:43:01,839 --> 00:43:06,369
some of the things that I talk about in
the book include like other forms of

414
00:43:06,369 --> 00:43:13,720
political beliefs, like decolonization or
attention to militarism that can actually

415
00:43:13,720 --> 00:43:18,640
sort of force you to have sometimes harder
conversations, but ones that can clarify

416
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:26,490
values and goals. Obviously, I don't need
to tell hacking groups, but keep

417
00:43:26,490 --> 00:43:32,740
theorizing and keep experimenting. That is
a way, whether it's crypto dancing or not,

418
00:43:32,740 --> 00:43:38,589
it's a way to sort of like walk yourself
through what you're trying to sort of

419
00:43:38,589 --> 00:43:43,460
build and iterate. And within spaces - I
think at this point this is fairly

420
00:43:43,460 --> 00:43:47,259
uncontroversial, but I do chronicle in the
book how people got here - making and

421
00:43:47,259 --> 00:43:53,609
enforcing rules, having conversations
sometimes one on one, not a sort of public

422
00:43:53,609 --> 00:44:01,299
conflagration, flame war. But if people
feel safe, respect each other enough

423
00:44:01,299 --> 00:44:07,900
to actually talk through what is the sort
of point of contention or difference and

424
00:44:07,900 --> 00:44:13,349
see if you can understand one another. The
other thing I want to point out though, is

425
00:44:13,349 --> 00:44:18,560
that there's a whole lot of stuff going on
here that is much, much bigger than the

426
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:24,930
spaces and communities that you're in. And
so it is kind of a mistake and no one's

427
00:44:24,930 --> 00:44:31,339
fault that you can't solve all of this in
the groups that you're in. And so there

428
00:44:31,339 --> 00:44:38,450
also has to be much bigger society-wide
goals that we all have our eyes on,

429
00:44:38,450 --> 00:44:43,720
because if we solve some of this stuff,
then, lo and behold, quote, "diversity in

430
00:44:43,720 --> 00:44:48,420
tech" would be a lot easier and probably
less fraught and contentious. But things

431
00:44:48,420 --> 00:44:54,529
like demilitarization, supply chain
justice, basic social equity, workplace

432
00:44:54,529 --> 00:45:00,519
fairness, public reconciliation - I'm
giving US examples here - reparations,

433
00:45:00,519 --> 00:45:07,830
land back. And obviously the one that's
coming for all of us, climate, is going to

434
00:45:07,830 --> 00:45:12,609
be the biggest problem. It already is the
biggest problem in terms of, you know,

435
00:45:12,609 --> 00:45:20,319
racial and economic and environmental
justice worldwide. So in conclusion, my

436
00:45:20,319 --> 00:45:25,409
little take home slogan is that there's no
hack or tech audit for justice, but there

437
00:45:25,409 --> 00:45:31,269
are these different levels and you can work
on one and work on another, but you can't

438
00:45:31,269 --> 00:45:37,069
solve the really big stuff in the sort of
tech domain. And that's not a shortcoming,

439
00:45:37,069 --> 00:45:42,640
and it's not for lack of trying. That is
all. I'm very happy to quit talking so

440
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:48,099
much and move to Q&A. Thank you so much
for your attention. Thanks.

441
00:45:48,099 --> 00:45:52,099
Herald: All right. Thank you.
Dunbar-Hester: Thank you.

442
00:45:52,099 --> 00:46:02,289
Herald: All right, everyone, questions on
Twitter, Mastodon, #rc3-two on IRC. We

443
00:46:02,289 --> 00:46:06,350
wait for a little bit and ask the
questions in the meantime. So this

444
00:46:06,350 --> 00:46:12,209
research for this book, when
did you actually do it, like timewise?

445
00:46:12,209 --> 00:46:18,359
Dunbar-Hester: Yeah, it started, it
actually, we were talking before we had an

446
00:46:18,359 --> 00:46:23,450
audience a little bit about radio. And my
earlier project was about people building

447
00:46:23,450 --> 00:46:30,430
radio stations and - try to be brief - but
they had a very emancipatory set of ideas

448
00:46:30,430 --> 00:46:35,000
about what it meant to teach people how to
build electronics or solder a transmitter

449
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:39,880
board or something. But they kept running
into some of these patterns of exclusion

450
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:46,890
that I mentioned. And so it was actually
through them that I heard about these

451
00:46:46,890 --> 00:46:51,490
conversations that were starting to happen
in and hacking and open source communities

452
00:46:51,490 --> 00:46:56,809
where people were trying to directly head-
on confront some of this stuff. So I think

453
00:46:56,809 --> 00:47:03,190
I heard about it in around the 2006 era,
started working on it, maybe... It's about

454
00:47:03,190 --> 00:47:09,259
2010 to about 2015, is the period
that I was actively, you know, going to

455
00:47:09,259 --> 00:47:14,039
conferences and meet-ups and spaces and
interviewing people. So it's this sort of

456
00:47:14,039 --> 00:47:17,900
snapshot. Yeah, that's the shortest
answer. Thanks.

457
00:47:17,900 --> 00:47:22,710
Herald: All right. That's very interesting
because I kept thinking if you had

458
00:47:22,710 --> 00:47:26,859
encountered this sort of rise of the alt-
right or something like this, because I

459
00:47:26,859 --> 00:47:31,489
feel like in the last couple of years,
these discussions have just become so much

460
00:47:31,489 --> 00:47:35,470
more radicalized and not from the left,
but from the right, like where you can

461
00:47:35,470 --> 00:47:39,839
basically no longer talk about this
without just all hell breaking loose.

462
00:47:39,839 --> 00:47:41,980
Right?
Dunbar-Hester: I think that's a really

463
00:47:41,980 --> 00:47:46,829
interesting point. And I think you're
right. This does, I mean, I was finishing

464
00:47:46,829 --> 00:47:51,460
the book during the Trump era over here,
and I know you've got your own counterparts

465
00:47:51,460 --> 00:47:58,099
in Europe, but this is all very much within
that kind of Obama liberal, neo liberal

466
00:47:58,099 --> 00:48:03,395
framing. And actually something I wrote
about, I think it's in the intro of the

467
00:48:03,395 --> 00:48:10,589
book, is the Obama White House had a women
in STEM, as part of a women and people of

468
00:48:10,589 --> 00:48:17,029
color in STEM, as part of a kind of
national security and a nationalist agenda

469
00:48:17,029 --> 00:48:23,109
basically on their page. And the Trump
administration took it down. So I think,

470
00:48:23,109 --> 00:48:33,130
and also in the book, there's a discussion
of a channel for Polish Python users where

471
00:48:33,130 --> 00:48:38,630
they were like fretting about how to ban
Nazis from the channel and whether Nazis

472
00:48:38,630 --> 00:48:44,859
were just people showing up and throwing
swastikas all over the IRC channel,

473
00:48:44,859 --> 00:48:49,950
whether that was "trolling" or whether it
was real Nazis. And, yes, I think the sort

474
00:48:49,950 --> 00:48:59,609
of stakes of some of this has gotten a lot
more stark. And so in certain ways,

475
00:48:59,609 --> 00:49:04,180
the sort of "which side are you on?"-
questions are easier, but the sort of

476
00:49:04,180 --> 00:49:10,890
depth of what's at stake and what's being
defended is maybe harder. So, yeah, the

477
00:49:10,890 --> 00:49:16,650
political context is sort of
temporal is really is part of this, yeah.

478
00:49:16,650 --> 00:49:22,819
Herald: All right. Now we turn to the IRC.
Have you looked into the woman in FLOSS as

479
00:49:22,819 --> 00:49:28,460
perhaps being one with predominantly
engineers as mothers/fathers?

480
00:49:28,460 --> 00:49:33,081
Dunbar-Hester: Sorry, could you repeat
women in FLOSS ...?

481
00:49:33,081 --> 00:49:37,039
Herald: I think the question is whether
you have sort of noticed a pattern that

482
00:49:37,039 --> 00:49:41,970
women that get into these spaces, sort of,
by their parents, have encountered

483
00:49:41,970 --> 00:49:46,450
engineering, I think it's a familiar
context.

484
00:49:46,450 --> 00:49:53,230
Dunbar-Hester: Yes, I have not personally
done research on that, but it does,

485
00:49:53,230 --> 00:50:03,230
y'know, sort of other historical and
sociological research shows that people

486
00:50:03,230 --> 00:50:11,710
who are exposed at a young age,
that's part of the differential. And even,

487
00:50:11,710 --> 00:50:18,250
even in households where, say, a computer
came home early on, we're talking about a

488
00:50:18,250 --> 00:50:23,950
slightly older generation. A computer came
home early on because parents brought it

489
00:50:23,950 --> 00:50:30,520
into the house. You know, boys were more
likely to sort of claim it as theirs or

490
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:35,039
take time on it or start playing with it
even a couple or a few years earlier than

491
00:50:35,039 --> 00:50:39,760
girls. And so, yeah, I haven't looked at
that, the sort of life narratives

492
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:44,359
directly, but other people have. And I
draw on that. And that's also something I

493
00:50:44,359 --> 00:50:50,440
am hearing now from people who are adults
and are thinking about these problems and

494
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:58,690
how they want to not have their own kids
encounter the same problems or sort of

495
00:50:58,690 --> 00:51:02,309
legacy of division. You definitely hear
people saying, "I want this to get solved

496
00:51:02,309 --> 00:51:07,240
so my daughter doesn't have a hard time."
But that's a little outside of what

497
00:51:07,240 --> 00:51:12,660
I've looked at, but it feeds in, yeah.
Herald: All right. All right. This is a

498
00:51:12,660 --> 00:51:16,470
slightly longer question. I'll try to do
my best: I've witnessed a lot of white

499
00:51:16,470 --> 00:51:24,150
feminism in FOSS, that's free open source
software, right? And FOSS diversity, equity

500
00:51:24,150 --> 00:51:30,290
and inclusions. DEI Spaces. Is
intersectionality sufficiently recognized

501
00:51:30,290 --> 00:51:35,570
as an issue in FOSS feminism, or is it
actually worse off due to the low number

502
00:51:35,570 --> 00:51:39,150
of women in FOSS, around 2%.

503
00:51:39,150 --> 00:51:45,769
Dunbar-Hester: Great. Yeah. So I couldn't.
At first I would flag that the numbers in

504
00:51:45,769 --> 00:51:52,009
FOSS have started to change. There's later
research that shows that they're up some.

505
00:51:52,009 --> 00:51:56,920
The question about white feminism is a
really good one. And I do write in the

506
00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:08,309
book about people sort of grappling with
that. And so the sort of trajectory was

507
00:52:08,309 --> 00:52:18,099
the first category that people started to
notice of exclusion was women, and I think

508
00:52:18,099 --> 00:52:27,180
I discussed how women opened up pretty
quickly to being non essentialist and

509
00:52:27,180 --> 00:52:32,489
again, inclusive of trans and non binary
sorts of identities. But I think that the

510
00:52:32,489 --> 00:52:39,539
race and the what I sometimes talk about
is sort of global positioning, the Global

511
00:52:39,539 --> 00:52:46,799
North hackers in Europe and North America.
It is harder, I think, for them to sort of

512
00:52:46,799 --> 00:52:55,520
deal as head on with, you know, race. And
I mean, these are fundamental questions of

513
00:52:55,520 --> 00:53:04,460
racial capitalism. And so being positioned
within fairly well advantaged Global North

514
00:53:04,460 --> 00:53:10,080
communities, it is harder to confront some
of those issues. I think there's a

515
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:15,359
consciousness of it, but I would say it's
a lot. What I observed was a lot greater

516
00:53:15,359 --> 00:53:22,829
awareness and sort of development of
potential solutions for being inclusive of

517
00:53:22,829 --> 00:53:31,650
women than a sort of really broadly
intersectional notion of women, including

518
00:53:31,650 --> 00:53:37,980
people in Global South positions and in
racialized categories in the Global North.

519
00:53:37,980 --> 00:53:43,049
And again, I think there's been a
sort of probably a shift in attention to

520
00:53:43,049 --> 00:53:49,789
that, some of which postdates the
period in the book. But I also think that

521
00:53:49,789 --> 00:53:54,930
that it's uniquely hard, I think, to
solve in volunturistic groups because the

522
00:53:54,930 --> 00:54:00,180
forces, at least in the US and I would
speculate in Europe as well, like the

523
00:54:00,180 --> 00:54:10,100
forces that cause inequality and
segregation. And, you know, like the tech

524
00:54:10,100 --> 00:54:13,079
industry is a really good place to see
these contradictions, like what's going on

525
00:54:13,079 --> 00:54:22,440
now with, like Google and the firing of Dr
Timnit Gebru is. You know, places where

526
00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:30,339
there's a sort of capitalistic incentive
are not going to be able to solve these

527
00:54:30,339 --> 00:54:34,730
problems of inequality because the profit
motive is always going to be there to

528
00:54:34,730 --> 00:54:43,269
build surveillance tech, to assist
countries and that want to

529
00:54:43,269 --> 00:54:49,200
build prisons. Again, this is what's
coming with climate stuff. And so saying,

530
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:55,420
oh, you need to hire more black women or
something is like running smack into these

531
00:54:55,420 --> 00:54:59,319
contradictions. And this is part of why I
say this really can't be solved within

532
00:54:59,319 --> 00:55:03,010
tech. And these are very big, thorny
issues. Another thing the final thing I'll

533
00:55:03,010 --> 00:55:10,099
point out this is sort of rambling is for
a voluntaristic group, it's gonna be

534
00:55:10,099 --> 00:55:15,960
easier to make fairly small interventions.
And so I think that that's. I actually

535
00:55:15,960 --> 00:55:20,140
have somebody talking about this, like if
we make the space more inclusive to

536
00:55:20,140 --> 00:55:28,200
anybody and say bad behavior isn't here or
isn't welcome here, you know, that can hit

537
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:32,680
a note where it might cause there to be a
sort of more inclusive community that

538
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:36,319
would be welcoming to a bunch of different
kinds of folks. But it's not necessarily

539
00:55:36,319 --> 00:55:44,380
realistic to tailor in a voluntaristic group
that's more a response to the sort of forms

540
00:55:44,380 --> 00:55:50,239
of exclusion all the kinds of
different people have experienced. And so,

541
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:54,839
again, I think this is kind of a question
of scale, but I really do think that the

542
00:55:54,839 --> 00:56:00,220
sort of way that voluntaristic groups,
i.e. not the market, not workplaces,

543
00:56:00,220 --> 00:56:06,160
articulate, you know, what they think the
problems are and how

544
00:56:06,160 --> 00:56:09,619
they can sort of begin to talk about
solutions are really important precisely

545
00:56:09,619 --> 00:56:18,729
because they're not hamstrung by the same
contradictions that for profit spaces are.

546
00:56:18,729 --> 00:56:23,770
That was a long ... That's a really great
question. I do take it up. Some are the

547
00:56:23,770 --> 00:56:26,950
people I was writing about. I think we're
starting to take it up. It's probably

548
00:56:26,950 --> 00:56:31,030
more full throated now. And it's very
complicated.

549
00:56:31,030 --> 00:56:34,049
Herald: Yes, all of these things.
Dunbar-Hester: Yeah.

550
00:56:34,049 --> 00:56:39,191
Herald: Alright, we do have an interesting
question: "Would you advise people to try

551
00:56:39,191 --> 00:56:45,569
to change communities from within or just
start new structures with more intersexual

552
00:56:45,569 --> 00:56:47,759
spaces?"
Dunbar-Hester: I don't have a great answer

553
00:56:47,759 --> 00:56:57,869
to that. I think it is kind of the
pressing question of the day, I think in a

554
00:56:57,869 --> 00:57:10,819
lot of a lot of spaces, and I see good
answers on both sides, and I think it

555
00:57:10,819 --> 00:57:23,029
depends perhaps. I do see a virtue in
some space being set aside, but how that a

556
00:57:23,029 --> 00:57:30,569
separate space chooses to interface with a
sort of wider space is going to vary. And

557
00:57:30,569 --> 00:57:33,709
I don't think, I don't think it's
necessarily a binary like you're either

558
00:57:33,709 --> 00:57:39,530
totally outside or you're within having a,
you know, a big discussion about how to be

559
00:57:39,530 --> 00:57:44,660
maximally inclusive. I think those things
are always kind of dialogically happening.

560
00:57:44,660 --> 00:57:49,770
But I've seen people argue both sides of
it, and I've seen, I think, compelling

561
00:57:49,770 --> 00:57:58,740
answers on both sides of it. But, yeah, it
is kind of the place where the idea that

562
00:57:58,740 --> 00:58:06,119
we're sort of all taking up this project
together can start to, you know, break

563
00:58:06,119 --> 00:58:10,349
down. And some people think you're really
losing. A lot of people go off and stop,

564
00:58:10,349 --> 00:58:19,240
you know, working together as some sort of
unified group. And so, yeah, I don't

565
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:22,930
have a great answer that. I do write
about it in the book. And I would say it

566
00:58:22,930 --> 00:58:25,940
depends on what the goals are. I think
having some separate space is probably

567
00:58:25,940 --> 00:58:30,031
important in any event.
Herald: Yeah, it seems like it is like

568
00:58:30,031 --> 00:58:34,700
these kind of hackerspace have at least
the advantage of being able to accommodate

569
00:58:34,700 --> 00:58:39,680
sort of subgroups, right. So you can have
these certain events, certain working

570
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:44,670
groups that can focus on these issues. For
example, I think our host today, the xHain

571
00:58:44,670 --> 00:58:49,990
hackerspace in Berlin, just started this
talk series "Gespräch unter Bäumen", which

572
00:58:49,990 --> 00:58:54,820
is just "Talks below the trees", they have
a LED tree in their hackerspace, and it

573
00:58:54,820 --> 00:58:58,109
just sort of naturally happened that it
had only women as speakers and it was just

574
00:58:58,109 --> 00:59:02,369
this lovely natural evolution of just
having much more interesting topics and

575
00:59:02,369 --> 00:59:07,539
not just, you know, the traditional male
hacker kind of topics. So I think it's

576
00:59:07,539 --> 00:59:11,069
really cool. And you just have this
ability to have these initiatives inside

577
00:59:11,069 --> 00:59:20,890
existing spaces somehow, but - just a rant
from my side. Someone had a question, the

578
00:59:20,890 --> 00:59:24,020
title of the book is just "Hacking
Diversity", right? I think we mentioned

579
00:59:24,020 --> 00:59:26,770
this at the beginning.
Dunbar-Hester: Yeah, I think the whole

580
00:59:26,770 --> 00:59:31,160
title, if you look for hacking diversity,
you'll find it. My name, Princeton

581
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:38,970
University Press. Yeah. I'll not be
shameless and say it's on very deep sale

582
00:59:38,970 --> 00:59:44,319
right now. If you were to buy it from
Princeton directly, there's a discount

583
00:59:44,319 --> 00:59:52,660
code and it's on my Twitter. It's I think
it's "H - D - E - V - S" anyway - it's

584
00:59:52,660 --> 00:59:55,579
40% percent off through like February.
Herald: Nice.

585
00:59:55,579 --> 00:59:59,680
Dunbar-Hester: Yeah. It's very affordable.
Herald: Alright, can you comment on how

586
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:03,950
structures like GitHub that predominantly
value codes and missions and other highly

587
01:00:03,950 --> 01:00:08,880
formalized tasks over community building
and less technical contributions play into

588
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:15,549
this nexus?
Dunbar-Hester: Yes, absolutely. I mean,

589
01:00:15,549 --> 01:00:21,569
historically, the focus on the
artifact, what you could produce, the

590
01:00:21,569 --> 01:00:30,530
code, even hardware, has taken on this
sort of exalted, symbolic meaning, and it

591
01:00:30,530 --> 01:00:36,079
has definitely contributed to both the
denigration and the invisibility of people

592
01:00:36,079 --> 01:00:43,089
who weren't doing that kind of work and
who might be doing community building or

593
01:00:43,089 --> 01:00:50,259
even things documentation or translation,
right? With it's being global practices

594
01:00:50,259 --> 01:00:56,150
that the sort of authors of the code are
getting the sort of priesthood

595
01:00:56,150 --> 01:01:00,781
status and everyone else is sort of lower.
I think, again, awareness of that is

596
01:01:00,781 --> 01:01:08,650
starting to change, but it's definitely
contributed to again historical sense that

597
01:01:08,650 --> 01:01:14,940
there was underrepresentation of some
kinds of folks. And I think there are ways

598
01:01:14,940 --> 01:01:22,490
you can, it sort of starts with raising
awareness of this. But again, that sort of

599
01:01:22,490 --> 01:01:28,849
signal, the celebration of the the
technologist is coming in from all these

600
01:01:28,849 --> 01:01:35,069
other places in the culture. And so
deprogramming that or something, as it

601
01:01:35,069 --> 01:01:41,670
were, is is tough, but not impossible. And
again, I see that, I see that actually, at

602
01:01:41,670 --> 01:01:48,470
least here as part of the sort of bigger
cultural war. And, you know, the idea that

603
01:01:48,470 --> 01:01:55,269
the sort of tech is the, you know, godly
apparatus and everything else is, you

604
01:01:55,269 --> 01:02:02,099
know, humanities and squishy soft stuff we
don't need that's going to fall away.

605
01:02:02,099 --> 01:02:08,190
Yeah, it doesn't have to be as big of
a topic as that, but that's again, it's

606
01:02:08,190 --> 01:02:12,630
all kind of in there. I don't know if
that answered a question, but, yes, that's

607
01:02:12,630 --> 01:02:18,219
there. And I think that's something that
the first step in addressing it can be

608
01:02:18,219 --> 01:02:24,349
acknowledging it and and building forms of
collaboration and that are not just sort

609
01:02:24,349 --> 01:02:30,039
of like nominally non hierarchical, but
specifically raising visibility and

610
01:02:30,039 --> 01:02:33,130
sort of credit giving to other kinds of
contributions.

611
01:02:33,130 --> 01:02:38,109
Herald: So do you feel as someone that is
actually a science and technology scholar

612
01:02:38,109 --> 01:02:43,150
that this feels as like is finally getting
recognized as something that exists and is

613
01:02:43,150 --> 01:02:47,190
real? Because I always have this impression
that people just assume this doesn't exist

614
01:02:47,190 --> 01:02:51,560
and no one thinks about this except them
and there is an entire academic field

615
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:56,270
about it. Do you think this is changing or
is it just to say?

616
01:02:56,270 --> 01:03:01,469
Dunbar-Hester: I don't know. I mean, I
think that there's a there's a lot of

617
01:03:01,469 --> 01:03:11,540
visibility on the one hand and even, you
know, something in the US with and who

618
01:03:11,540 --> 01:03:17,150
knows what will be happening after COVID,
but, you know, public school systems were

619
01:03:17,150 --> 01:03:23,260
having their budgets cut after the first
financial crisis in 2008. And one of the

620
01:03:23,260 --> 01:03:27,450
things that was being proposed was moving
a hackerspace into a high school and sort

621
01:03:27,450 --> 01:03:35,210
of having that, you know, come forward and
do things that institutions had maybe once

622
01:03:35,210 --> 01:03:45,559
been doing. I think that that again, I'll
keep coming back to the tension between

623
01:03:45,559 --> 01:03:52,130
what I think some of the most interesting
voluntaristic and politicized sort of

624
01:03:52,130 --> 01:03:58,869
goals for these kinds of activities, them,
versus what the market wants them to do,

625
01:03:58,869 --> 01:04:06,219
are, are sort of in tension. And there was
a moment where I was interviewing someone,

626
01:04:06,219 --> 01:04:12,269
maybe and I want to say 2012, and I was
asking him questions about free software

627
01:04:12,269 --> 01:04:16,799
and he was very kind but he said something
like, "Why are you asking me about free

628
01:04:16,799 --> 01:04:24,010
software? Like that's dead.", you know,
like Open Source 1.0 - sort of. And I'm

629
01:04:24,010 --> 01:04:31,460
not the only person who's written about
that at all, but I think this sort of idea

630
01:04:31,460 --> 01:04:38,160
that there's something here that can't
just be, you know, co-opted by a market

631
01:04:38,160 --> 01:04:45,170
like that's the hard part and, I mean. I
think there is a lot of there's continuing

632
01:04:45,170 --> 01:04:50,480
to be a lot of attention to hackathons and
coding bootcamps and these kinds of

633
01:04:50,480 --> 01:04:58,819
things. But I don't know, I guess I'm sort
of too inside and outside at the same time

634
01:04:58,819 --> 01:05:02,420
to have a good answer. I think that
there's a well-established body of

635
01:05:02,420 --> 01:05:09,829
scholarly recognition of these activities.
People look at me less weird talking about

636
01:05:09,829 --> 01:05:17,650
this than a book about radio in the twenty
first century. But I think the sort of,

637
01:05:17,650 --> 01:05:25,650
you know, really sustained work to sort of
disarticulate, disentangle some of this

638
01:05:25,650 --> 01:05:30,369
from industry where it's getting the sort
of most not just attention, but the sort

639
01:05:30,369 --> 01:05:36,650
of celebration and the ways that that can
kind of distort, I think, some of the

640
01:05:36,650 --> 01:05:39,839
other intentions that is is always going
to be tough.

641
01:05:39,839 --> 01:05:44,549
Herald: Allright. Wonderful. I think we're
out of time. So thank you very much.

642
01:05:44,549 --> 01:05:50,519
Everyone, buy the book. And have a good
night. Bye, bye.

643
01:05:50,519 --> 01:05:53,549
Dunbar-Hester: Good day.
Thank you so much. Thank you.

644
01:05:53,549 --> 01:05:55,619
Herald: Thank you.

645
01:05:55,619 --> 01:05:57,959
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646
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