“Well, it’s Open Source, I guess I could go download the source code… but… meh, it’s so far out of my way, not worth it,” and the urge fizzles out. I think that a lot of potential human creativity is being wasted this way.

Our understanding of building platforms and sequencing towards them is still nascent. From how to shift the allocation of resources between a company’s core business and its potential future expansions to how to structure a platform to catalyze its growth and more. Until the playbook is well understood, it is more art than science. There are many decisions to make, including which layers should be centralized, whether the ecosystem should be driven by open source contributors or profit-seeking enterprises, how broad in scope to allow the ecosystem to grow and where to not let it grow, and more.

Atanyrate,thisbringsustothesecondgroupwementionedearlier:hacktivists.Thetermisnotanelegantone,andithashadalimitedtraction,probablyforthatreason.Butitintroducesavitaldistinctionintermsofunderstandingtheeffectsofwhathackersdoinorbysayingsomethingandthusdoingsomethingwithcode.JordanandTaylorcapturedthisvitaldifferencebydesignatinghacktivistsasrebelswithacauseandyetposingthisstatementwithaquestionmarktoindicatethattheeffectsarenotstraightforwardtointerpret.

Levydrewamorenuancedandpanoramicviewofhackersyetstillpracticallyreproducedtheclandestineimage.Critiquingthisimage,TimJordanandPaulTaylorarguethatvariousclassesofhackersemergedovertimeandneedtobedistinguished.

Put slightly differently, if we want civic hackathons to produce ideas that improve society, we need to more deeply and sincerely shape choices, thought processes, and activities that might make technology civic.

Dunne and Raby’s (2013) notion of speculative design helps outline how future-oriented thought works at civic hackathons. They suggest that speculative design on “wicked problems” creates “spaces for discussion and debate about alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people’s imaginations to flow freely” (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 2). They find merit in dreaming, as the future is an “aid imaginative thought” (p. 3). Materialities assist development of ideas and approaches to collectively thinking about possible futures. For them, critique has a place in design, particularly humor. Designers can “pull new technological developments into imaginary but believable everyday situations so that we can explore possible consequences before they happen” (p. 57). Speculative design is a helpful bridge to the civic imagination.

that civic hackathons are highly fluid and contested spaces where power is negotiated. However, critical and design perspectives clearly differ on the theorized relationship between civic participation and technology. The imposed civic ideology perspective tells us high technology corporations force an essentially bogus ideology on the event. Participants

Simply diversifying participantion is no guarantee that outcomes benefit diverse communities, and declaring an event civically important does not make it so. After years of participating in and running civic hackathons I noticed a new turn. This new type of civic hackathon was intentionally run to foster performance, spectacle, and communicative activities around a loose shell of technology-oriented activities. Technology became more talked about than materially captured.

More staunch critics questioned if the White House was being duplicitous by inviting “civic hackers” under the guise of transparency while having the worst administrative record for prosecuting whistleblowers.

Initially at least, civic hackathons were initially positioned as a form of public outreach for civic hackers, a loose-knit community interested in applying technology for social good. James Crabtree (2007) defined “civic hacking” as “the development of applications to allow mutual aid among citizens rather than through the state.” In particular, he suggested an extra-institutional definition, thatcivic hacking filled in where e-democracy had failed. The meaning of “civic” at this stage leaned towards a libertarian perspective, which remains a persistent critique of hacking among critical studies scholars (Golumbia, 2013).

The two perspectives are also not mutually exclusive — a participant might be frustrated at the rushed, corporatized nature of a certain civic hackathon and come to explore ideas about improving civic life.

Civic hackathons have been hotly debated in recent years. Critical studies scholars have lambasted civic hackathons for aligning with middle-class citizenship(Irani, 2015)and co-opting participant labor (Gregg, 2014a). Silicon Valley is often the fait accompliin these perspectives, bringing a flawed ideology that seduces organizers and participants into transposing technological language onto civic issues (Also see: Barbrook & Cameron, 1996; Morozov, 2013). In this paper I refer to this perspective as an “imposed civic ideology.” The second perspective comes from design scholars interested in material participation (Marres, 2012) as cohering publics to work on particular social issues. Lodato and DiSalvo (2016) suggested that civic hackathons served two purposes. First, they help people think through civic issues using props — “objects, services, and systems that engage with issues” (p. 16). Second, they cohere ephemeral proto-publics for short-term engagement on issues of public concern. As they summarized, "what is important is not the inventiveness of a particular prototype product or service, but rather, how the event fosters opportunities for collaborative or collective issue articulation" (p. 15). They drew attention to how outcomes of civic hackathons may more likely be social and cultural than functional material objects. I refer to this design perspective as an “emergent civic subjectivity.”

The baroque succeeded because it expressed something all Latin American people (Indians, Africans, mestizos, and even sons and daughters of Spaniards born on the con-tinent) had in common: the rejection of the domineering and distant center. Carpentier (1995) explains that to understand “Why is Latin America the chosen territory of the baroque?” we must look at the people and processes that allowed them to finally own the continent: “Because all symbiosis, all mestisaje engenders the baroque. The American baroque develops [...] with the self-awareness of the American man [...] the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo” (p

“Civic hackers” are a diverse range of individuals who improve community life by creating and modifying digital infrastructure. Policy-makers optimistically describe them as driving new economies using government data. Critical scholars note how they precariously labor for waning institutions. Yet, we may misunderstand civic hackers because they transgress established political categories of libertarianism and liberalism, and adversary and unitary democracy. Andrew Schrock charts a middle ground by argu-ing that civic hacking—and its fraught, even contradictory politics—partly emerged from a history of progressive informational practices. In the shift from “information” to “data,” the original goals of these practices became muted, even as new possibilities for civic engagement emerged. “Data activism and advocacy” describes a fraught but diverse range of political tactics of amateur experts working for change, often within the political system. He argues these remediated practices carry the impulses of political reform, even as they are often tied up with conflicting imperatives.

Might “utopian realist” be applicable to the practices of civic hackers, intertwined with particular repertoires, technologies, and affective publics? McKenzie Wark (2014) sug-gests that the relationship between utopian and realist might be mutually constitutive rather than dialectical. He re-frames utopia as a realizable fragment or diagram that re-imagines relations. From this perspective, civic hacking gets traction not because they were ever intended to be the sole “solution” to a problem, but they are ways of acting and creating that are immediately apprehensible. Prototypes capture the imagination because they are shards of a possible future and can be created, modified, and argued about (Coleman, 2009).

Civic hackers might be most appropriately described as utopian realists (Giddens, 1990: 154), a term Giddens employed to capture how assuaging negative consequences in a risk society required retaining Marx’s concern of connecting social change to insti-tutional possibilities while leaving behind his formulation of history as determining and reliance on the proletariat as change agents. He positioned utopian realists as sensitive to social change, capable of creating positive models of society, and connecting with life politics.

civic hackers seek to ease societal suffering by bringing the hidden workings of abstract systems to light and improve their functioning. Part of the academic discomfort with recognizing civic hacking might stem from their activities cutting across political categories that have traditionally been passionately defended: unitary and adversary, citizen and consumer, horizontalist and institutionalized, and prefigurative and strategic.

Data activism and advocacy ranges from civic engagement (Putnam, 2001) to more oppositional activism (Jordan, 2001). In this sense, it is a spe-cific association of technologically mediated participation with particular political goals (Lievrouw, 2011) resulting in a wide range of tactics. Although open government data is still evolving and is constrained by predictions for economic growth and self-regulation, I argue it enables civic hackers to participate in civic data politics. This is particularly important because data-driven environment is often distanced from pro-viding individuals a sense of agency to change their conditions (Couldry and Powell, 2014). Data activism and advocacy can take place through organizing on related top-ics, online through mediated data repositories such as Github, and in-person events such as hackathons.

Civic hacking can broadly be described as a form of alternative/activist media that “employ or modify the communication artifacts, practices, and social arrangements of new information and communication technologies to challenge or alter dominant, expected, or accepted ways of doing society, culture, and politics” (Lievrouw, 2011: 19). Ample research has considered how changes in technology and access have created “an environment for politics that is increasingly information-rich and communication-inten-sive” (Bimber, 2001). Earl and Kimport (2011) argue that such digital activism draws attention to modes of protest—“digital repertoires of contention” (p. 180)—more than formalized political movements

Organizations such as Code for America (CfA) rallied support by positioning civic hacking as a mode of direct partici-pation in improving structures of governance. However, critics objected to the involve-ment of corporations in civic hacking as well as their dubious political alignment and non-grassroots origins. Critical historian Evgeny Morozov (2013a) suggested that “civic hacker” is an apolitical category imposed by ideologies of “scientism” emanating from Silicon Valley. Tom Slee (2012) similarly described the open data movement as co-opted and neoliberalist.

Other definitions capture broader notions of civil society. A 2010 study backed by the Open Society Foundation described civic hackers as “deploying information technology tools to enrich civic life, or to solve particular problems of a civic nature, such as democratic engagement” (Hogge, 2010: 10).

I conclude civic hackers are utopian realists involved in the crafting of algorithmic power and discussing ethics of technology design.

Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data

Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men. But behind every one is an invisible infrastructure of labor—primarily caregiving, in its various aspects—that is mostly performed by women.

the true hacker spirit does not reside at Google, guided by profit targets

The gentrification of hacking is… well, perhaps a perfect hack.

‘hacking’ as quirky-but-edgy innovation by optimistic entrepreneurs with a love of getting things done

the revised definition of the tech startup entrepreneur as a hacker forms part of an emergent system of Silicon Valley doublethink

For all his protestations of innocence, it’s clear that Draper’s curiosity was essentially subversive. It represented a threat to the ordered lines of power within the system. The phreakers were trying to open up information infrastructure, and in doing so they showed a calculated disregard for the authorities that dominated it.

For all his protestations of innocence, it’s clear that Draper’s curiosity was essentially subversive. It represented a threat to the ordered lines of power within the system. The phreakers were trying to open up information infrastructure, and in doing so they showed a calculated disregard for the authorities that dominated it.