Position:
Interest and Bio:
Trained as an anthropologist, Gabriella (Biella) Coleman researches and writes on computer hacking, online collaboration, and digital activism.
Between 2001-2003 she conducted ethnographic research on computer hackers primarily in San Francisco, the Netherlands, as well as those hackers who work on the largest free software project, Debian. Her first book, Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press and she is currently working on a new book on Anonymous and digital activism. She holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University.
Publications:
Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking - Princeton University Press. Forthcoming, November 2012)
Am I Anonymous? - Limn, Forthcoming, May 2012
Hackers - The Johns Hopkins Encyclopedia of Digital Textuality. Forthcoming, 2012
Anonymous - Glossary of Network Ecologies, Forthcoming, May 2012
Our Weirdness is Free, The logic of Anonymous—online army, agent of chaos, and seeker of justice. - Triple Canopy, January 2012
Hacker Politics and Publics - Public Culture, November 2011
Another tech pioneer, Dennis Ritchie, passes - Aljazeera English, October 2011 (with Chris Kelty)
Is it a Crime? The Trangressive Politics of Hacking in Anonymous - OWNI.eu, News, Augmented, October 2011 (with Micahel Ralph)
The Ethics of Digital Direct Action - Aljazeera English, September 2011
Is Anonymous Anarchy? - OWNI.eu, News, Augmented, August 2011
"Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action." Part of the "Politics in the Age of Secrecy and Transparency" Cluster (edited by Gabriella Coleman). The New Everyday
Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls and the Politics of Transgression and Spectacle. In The Social Media Reader, ed. Michael Mandiberg. New York: NYU Press (forthcoming)
Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media. Annual Review of Anthropology. 39: 1-16, (2010)
Hacking In-Person: The Ritual Character of Conferences and the Distillation of a Life-World. Anthropological Quarterly, Winter (2010)
Code is Speech: Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest among Free and Open Source Software Developers. Cultural Anthropology. 24(3): 420-454 (2009)
Hacker Practice: Moral Genres and the Cultural Articulation of Liberalism. Anthropological Theory, Vol. 8, No. 3, 255-277 (2008) (with Alex Golub)
The Politics of Rationality: Psychiatric Survivor's Challenge to Psychiatry. In Tactical Biopolitics. Kavita Phillip and Beatriz de Costa (editors). Cambridge: MIT Press (2008)
Los Temps d'Indymedia. Multitudes. (21): 41-N48, May (2005)
Indymedia's Independence: From Activist Media to Free Software (English Version of Los Temps d'Indymedia). Multitudes. (21): 41-N48, May (2005)
The Social Production of Ethics in Debian and Free Software Communities. In Free and Open Source Software Development. Stefan Koch (ed.). Idea group, (2004) (with Mako Hill)
The Political Agnosticism of Free and Open Source Software and the Inadvertent Politics of Contrast. Anthropology Quarterly. 77(03): 507-519, Summer (2004)
How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun. M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture, July (2004) (with Mako Hill)