Coding Democracy: How Hackers Are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism

By Maureen Webb

Book Overview

Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy.

Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262542285
• ISBN13: 9780262542289
• Release Date: July 2021
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.7"