Anthropologist Spends Three Years Living With Hackers 252
concealment writes "Coleman, an anthropologist who teaches at McGill University, spent three years studying the community that builds the Debian GNU/Linux open source operating system and hackers in the Bay Area. More recently, she's been peeling away the onion that is the Anonymous movement, a group that hacks as a means of protest — and mischief. When she moved to San Francisco, she volunteered with the Electronic Frontier Foundation — she believed, correctly, that having an eff.org address would make people more willing to talk to her — and started making the scene. She talked free software over Chinese food at the Bay Area Linux User Group's monthly meetings upstairs at San Francisco's Four Seas Restaurant. She marched with geeks demanding the release of Adobe eBooks hacker Dmitry Sklyarov. She learned the culture inside-out."
Great (Score:2, Funny)
That's awesome. Welcome to the internet. Guess Coleman will talk about how he discovered Reddit in his next article!
Her next research project (Score:5, Funny)
will be studying the grooming habits of Orthodox Stallmanites
i hope.. (Score:5, Funny)
..she was not burnt by the hot grits.
Debian (Score:0, Funny)
3 years working with Debian dev's. Whats that like 1 release?
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
there are no girls
you need to give up your ovarys when you login
first (Score:3, Funny)
she had to singe and destroy her olfactory nerves
thus rendered dead to the sense of smell, she was able to continue to function while embedded in the community
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
She must have a respectable beard by now, after living with hackers for three years. Confusing her with a guy is to be expected. Be careful not to confuse free software with open source near her if you want to keep your fingers.
Re:I'm not sure why all the cynicism... (Score:5, Funny)
because up until this book, the stereotype of fat, smelly, and living in mom's basement has only been rumor.
Re:TLDR version (Score:2, Funny)
I disagree ... there's also Apple advertising.
She??? (Score:5, Funny)
You introduced a female into a development group? No wonder Debian didn't get anything done for the past couple of years.
Movie? (Score:5, Funny)
timeline (Score:5, Funny)
Day 1. OMFG, the smell.
Day 2. I don't know how long I can live on Doritos and Mountain Dew.
Day 3. I think I've made contact, they keep saying Boobs or GTFO.
Year 3. I'm done, going to the spa.
Re:I'm not sure why all the cynicism... (Score:4, Funny)
Having it told right would be good. The community and the world do not need another book talking about hackers's enthusiasm for a text editor called 'Emax" [sic].
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
smash the patriarchy
You have to pay extra for that kind of thing.
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatry Dilbert Strip (Score:5, Funny)
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-04-11/ [dilbert.com]
Geek Groupie (Score:4, Funny)
she's hot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
Are you talking about face beard or...
Re:Only 3 years? Are you kidding? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:timeline (Score:5, Funny)
I figure that she drew the short straw. The other anthropologists got to go live with various aboriginal tribes, live in mud huts or tents, risk various tropical diseases, eat bugs and/or various animal parts not usually considered as edible in the west, whitness cruel ritual sacrifices, not bathe for weeks on end, live without almost any technology or modern convenience, etc. And she got the short straw. Poor girl. I hope she recovers.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
Living that close to that much testosterone could lead to beard growth... the real damage would be done by the thousands of hot pockets and cans of coke consumed. I'm surprise she lived to finish the research.
Re:Only 3 years? Are you kidding? (Score:2, Funny)
And here we have, a person who only spent 3 fricking years (as she put it "researching") comes out with her "immense knowledge" of the hacker subculture.
Where did you get that "immense knowledge" part? It wasn't in the article, and it wasn't expressed using other words either.
Also at no point in the article did she say that all hacker culture everywhere is like that. In fact the article explicitly mentions that she wanted to study and studied differences between different hacker groups.
He is grossly overreacting to a minor outside irrtant. It is very common behaviour in /. Nerds and is often accompanied with grossly overstated accounts of the offenders behaviour and suggestions for draconian punishment.
Re:Only 3 years? Are you kidding? (Score:5, Funny)
Most of those people to whom you refer aren't exactly students of human nature. This, on the other hand, is an anthropologist. You know the difference, right?
I know people who've spent decades living by a lake and don't know as much about that lake as a marine biologist who showed up last week.
a marine biologist specializes in oceans, a limnologist in lakes. more or less.
...So if you're a marine biologist you're not allowed to study lakes, or simply incapable of learning about them?
OK, so lets get it right - an anthropologist at a hacker's meeting is like a marine bilologist who studies limnology [wikipedia.org] as a hobby turning up at a lake. Why didn't you say so in the first place, the analogy is so obvious