translations/Feminist_ninja_upgrading_intersectional_feminism_with_the_hacker_class/upgrading_intersectional_feminism_with_the_hacker_class.2.eng.srt

1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:05,320
Part 2: Political Economy of the Hack
Vectoralism and hackers as a class

2
00:00:06,920 --> 00:00:12,480
In popular culture, the hacker is stereotyped like a sci-fi version of the wizard -

3
00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:18,440
a heroic loner, usually white cis hetero man, with powers of computer expertise

4
00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:23,080
incomprehensible to us who don’t have the magical essence of the hacker.

5
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:26,480
¡¡¡ LO POSEO TODO !!!

6
00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:31,720
In contrast, McKenzie Wark, the author
of “A Hacker Manifesto”,

7
00:00:31,720 --> 00:00:35,640
describes the hacker
as someone who produces information

8
00:00:35,640 --> 00:00:38,000
but doesn't own or control it.

9
00:00:38,480 --> 00:00:42,840
She defines hackers as a class,
in terms of political economy, 

10
00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:47,840
exploited under the new dominant ruling class that she calls the vectoralist class 

11
00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:53,760
(e.g. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple,
Microsoft and their Chinese equivalents).

12
00:00:53,880 --> 00:00:58,760
Vectoralism is a mode of production based on the asymmetry of information,

13
00:00:58,760 --> 00:01:03,800
created through ownership and control over stocks, flows and vectors of information

14
00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:05,800
by the vectoralist class.

15
00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:11,800
By this definition, hacker class is
not only computer programmers

16
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:15,600
who gets exploited by the vectoralists
that patent their code.

17
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:21,360
Anyone of us walking around with
a smartphone is part of the hacker class

18
00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:23,920
because even if we don't know this,

19
00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:28,960
we produce new location data and we don't own or control this information

20
00:01:28,960 --> 00:01:31,120
but the vectoralists do.

21
00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:37,800
From text messages to video calls, web searches to doom scrolls,

22
00:01:37,800 --> 00:01:40,560
with each status update, each like,

23
00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:46,160
every interaction with our smart devices we produce new information,

24
00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:48,360
if about nothing else,
then about who we are.

25
00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:52,960
Who we are is what we do and its all
recorded and processed.

26
00:01:53,320 --> 00:01:58,800
Regardless of family, friendly and comradely qualities of relationships, 

27
00:01:58,800 --> 00:02:02,600
intimacy is quantified and commodified as information, 

28
00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:05,480
alongside all other forms of affect.

29
00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:10,680
If hacking is defined by curiosity, then its already monopolized by Google.

30
00:02:11,680 --> 00:02:17,200
When you asked them a question, old school chauvinist hackers would tell you to RTFM

31
00:02:17,200 --> 00:02:20,320
 meaning "read the fucking manual"

32
00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:22,800
now they say "just fucking google it".

33
00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:27,280
But when we look for something on a vectoralist platform like Google,

34
00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:29,800
it looks back at us.

35
00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:33,960
It gives us an algorithmically
curated response to what we're looking for,

36
00:02:33,960 --> 00:02:36,880
based upon the information
it already has on us.

37
00:02:37,640 --> 00:02:40,520
Rather we are satisfied
or not with the result,

38
00:02:40,520 --> 00:02:44,360
Google gets to learn what we
are looking for, our desires,

39
00:02:44,360 --> 00:02:49,560
either deep or superficial, which is an important information to have about us

40
00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:55,160
especially when we don't know
what each other want or get,

41
00:02:55,160 --> 00:02:59,560
while Google gets to know all of it
times billions.

42
00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:04,800
When an artist shares a piece of art on a vectoralist platform

43
00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:07,560
like Instagram, Youtube, Spotify, etc.

44
00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:12,240
they may get paid by the platform a fraction of the value they produce,

45
00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:14,640
in proportion with the attention they capture,

46
00:03:14,640 --> 00:03:17,840
which is exploitative against the artist.

47
00:03:18,200 --> 00:03:22,880
But anyone giving attention to the piece
of art is also exploited,

48
00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:28,680
usually without getting paid, in fact
our attention is what pays for everything.

49
00:03:29,080 --> 00:03:33,760
In a different form, intellectual property
and commodification of information

50
00:03:33,760 --> 00:03:38,720
works even worse for scientists and academics that have to pay journals

51
00:03:38,720 --> 00:03:43,000
to publish their work, only to be
paywalled behind obscene prices

52
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:44,640
so noone gets to read them.

53
00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:50,560
The phrase "if you're not paying for the product, then you are the product"

54
00:03:50,560 --> 00:03:55,840
was written for broadcast media in 1973

55
00:03:55,840 --> 00:03:59,320
when there was no such thing
as personalized advertisement.

56
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:03,640
In the world of social media
if you're not paying for the product, 

57
00:04:03,640 --> 00:04:06,320
you are both the product
and the producer.

58
00:04:07,240 --> 00:04:12,040
Broadcast media could only target
one demographic at a time;

59
00:04:12,880 --> 00:04:18,720
social media can target each user personally

60
00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:23,680
because each social media user produces new information about themselves,

61
00:04:23,680 --> 00:04:26,200
their environment, their relationships and desires.

62
00:04:26,880 --> 00:04:29,280
The internet is not free and it never was.

63
00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:34,000
First of all you need to pay for the hardware to connect

64
00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:37,800
because obviously,
to mine valuable minerals from the earth, 

65
00:04:37,800 --> 00:04:43,160
transporting it to furnaces for smelting it, producing & soldering microchips has a cost.

66
00:04:43,160 --> 00:04:48,280
Powering the hardware requires electricity produced from natural resources,

67
00:04:48,280 --> 00:04:49,720
which is also not free.

68
00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:54,000
Internet service providers need a lot
of hardware and electricity

69
00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:57,000
to keep the internet running, which is why

70
00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:01,080
you still have to pay for internet access and usage in most parts of the world.

71
00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:05,640
To provide internet services like websites, email and social media 

72
00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:08,520
you also need hardware, in the end,

73
00:05:08,520 --> 00:05:12,880
servers have to be on working computers
connected to the internet.

74
00:05:13,280 --> 00:05:19,400
So when vectoralists say they are providing services for free, like Google, Facebook, etc.

75
00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:21,920
this doesn't mean that they found a magical way

76
00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:24,800
to produce computers and networks for free

77
00:05:24,800 --> 00:05:28,800
nor a free source of electricity to keep everything working.

78
00:05:29,680 --> 00:05:33,280
Vectoralists are paying for the costs of
the services they provide us,

79
00:05:33,280 --> 00:05:36,560
including the cost of running supercomputers

80
00:05:36,560 --> 00:05:41,360
with Artificial Intelligence that personalizes our experiences of the services

81
00:05:41,560 --> 00:05:44,120
and obviously,
they are not doing it for charity.

82
00:05:46,040 --> 00:05:49,080
Facebook is even paying for
the connectivity of people

83
00:05:49,080 --> 00:05:53,240
in more than 50 countries of Latin America,
Africa and Asia, but,

84
00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:56,880
doesn't give them connection to anything other than Facebook and it's partners.

85
00:05:56,880 --> 00:05:58,920
They are doing this because they know

86
00:05:58,920 --> 00:06:03,840
their returns will be much greater if
they invest to own the infrastructure.

87
00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:08,280
"Power now resides
in the infrastructures of this world...

88
00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:13,120
Infrastructures organize a life without
a world, suspended, expendable,

89
00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:16,280
at the mercy of
whoever is managing them..."

90
00:06:16,640 --> 00:06:21,680
Pre-capitalist forms of class domination
were born out of the abstraction of rent, 

91
00:06:21,680 --> 00:06:26,120
which is surplus product exploited from farming classes

92
00:06:26,120 --> 00:06:29,320
that lived on a land that sustained them.

93
00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:34,320
Capitalism grew out of the abstraction
of profit, 

94
00:06:34,320 --> 00:06:37,560
which is surplus value exploited from working classes 

95
00:06:37,560 --> 00:06:41,280
that are paid wages to sustain their lives.

96
00:06:42,520 --> 00:06:45,960
Vectoralism is the next level of abstraction

97
00:06:45,960 --> 00:06:49,280
that exploits surplus information from the hacker classes 

98
00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:52,400
and most of the hacker classes that produce this information

99
00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:54,240
doesn't even get paid for it,

100
00:06:54,240 --> 00:06:57,840
while sustainability of all life on earth
is threatened

101
00:06:57,840 --> 00:07:02,000
and vectoralists are racing their way to off-world colonies.

102
00:07:03,440 --> 00:07:07,760
Each subsequent form of class domination is built upon the previous form.

103
00:07:07,960 --> 00:07:11,040
Capitalism didn't abolish rentier classes,

104
00:07:11,040 --> 00:07:15,120
it made them more exploitative under
capitalist rule.

105
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:19,800
Vectoralism doesnt
abolish capitalist and rentier classes,

106
00:07:19,800 --> 00:07:24,240
it makes them more exploitative under
vectoralist rule.

107
00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:29,040
All class exploitation is legalized through property laws 

108
00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:32,800
which are enforced and maintained by constant violence 

109
00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:34,920
of repressive state apparatus.

110
00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:39,040
Since vectoralists are
the dominant ruling class of our age,

111
00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:42,480
they are constantly upgrading their
monopolies of violence 

112
00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:45,320
with vast amounts of new information,

113
00:07:45,320 --> 00:07:49,960
artificial intelligence and supercomputers to process all this.

114
00:07:50,520 --> 00:07:52,840
It is revealed by many whistleblowers

115
00:07:52,840 --> 00:07:56,840
most famously Chelsea Manning
and Edward Snowden

116
00:07:56,840 --> 00:08:00,280
that United States of America's relationship to vectoralists 

117
00:08:00,280 --> 00:08:05,600
is not much different from what's happening behind the great firewall of China

118
00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:09,280
with apps funded
by the Chinese Communist Party.

119
00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:12,960
It is even said that
the Chinese model is more honest 

120
00:08:12,960 --> 00:08:15,320
because it's exercised more openly.

121
00:08:15,320 --> 00:08:19,720
By now more than a billion surveillance cameras are put in place 

122
00:08:19,720 --> 00:08:23,640
with constantly improving facial recognition abilities

123
00:08:24,640 --> 00:08:31,240
but even this is small in number compared to the number of cameras on smartphones

124
00:08:31,240 --> 00:08:37,240
 carried voluntarily by
billions of cyborg hackers around the world.

125
00:08:37,880 --> 00:08:44,160
Some of the biggest myths of our time is about the Cloud and Artificial Intelligence.

126
00:08:44,720 --> 00:08:49,680
While marketed as comfort, safety and unprecedented improvement, 

127
00:08:49,680 --> 00:08:51,960
they deliver the opposite.

128
00:08:52,760 --> 00:08:55,760
The Cloud,
where all our information is gathered,

129
00:08:55,760 --> 00:08:59,680
is just a lot of computers,
called server farms,

130
00:08:59,680 --> 00:09:05,560
owned by vectoralists,
it's not soft and fluffy, it's pretty hard.

131
00:09:06,520 --> 00:09:11,600
The Artificial Intelligence is an algorithm,
also owned by vectoralists,

132
00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:16,320
which is used to process our data,
to make it more exploitable.

133
00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:19,240
It reinforces structural injustices

134
00:09:19,240 --> 00:09:24,520
while giving them a mathematical justification that claims to be neutral

135
00:09:24,520 --> 00:09:30,720
but can't be checked because it's private, we're just expected to believe in it.

136
00:09:31,960 --> 00:09:37,800
Amazon Web Services has the biggest market share in the Cloud,

137
00:09:37,800 --> 00:09:41,160
and accordingly powering
a lot of Artificial Intelligence.

138
00:09:41,760 --> 00:09:45,920
However, what makes the circle complete is the Amazon Mechanical Turk,

139
00:09:45,920 --> 00:09:49,520
where people called
ghost workers with no labor rights

140
00:09:49,520 --> 00:09:53,680
are given the lowest possible fees
to do the tasks Artificial Intellligence can't do

141
00:09:53,680 --> 00:09:59,480
like content moderation or deciphering
diverse human speech.

142
00:09:59,880 --> 00:10:02,760
Alexa, Siri and Cortana are always listening
to us,

143
00:10:02,760 --> 00:10:09,040
 while ghost workers listen to them to correct and improve their understanding.

144
00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:14,080
Ghost workers are forced to sign
Non Disclosure Agreements

145
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:15,840
 to prevent them from organizing

146
00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:19,200
and maintain the appearance of the Artificial Intelligence,

147
00:10:19,680 --> 00:10:22,400
Los humanos están involucrados
en cada paso del proceso

148
00:10:22,400 --> 00:10:25,600
cuando estás usando cualquier cosa online

149
00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:29,120
pero nos venden como este milagro de la automatización.

150
00:10:29,400 --> 00:10:34,120
meanwhile their work is critical
for machine learning programs

151
00:10:34,120 --> 00:10:40,120
to improve the Artificial Intelligence
until it can finally replace the ghost workers.

152
00:10:41,280 --> 00:10:45,760
Antes de internet era realmente difícil encontrar a alguien

153
00:10:45,760 --> 00:10:48,040
y sentarlo durante diez minutos y hacer que trabajara para ti

154
00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:49,600
y luego despedirlo después de diez minutos

155
00:10:49,600 --> 00:10:52,160
pero con la tecnología realmente puedes encontrarlo,

156
00:10:52,160 --> 00:10:56,360
pagarle una pequeña cantidad de dinero y luego deshacerte de ellos

157
00:10:56,360 --> 00:10:58,680
cuando ya no los necesites.

158
00:10:58,680 --> 00:11:05,920
The AI detects copyrighted media on livestreams in real time and stops them

159
00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:08,920
but doesn't do the same for violence and torture.

160
00:11:09,320 --> 00:11:14,640
Mass murder and gang rape have been livestreamed on vectoralist platforms

161
00:11:14,640 --> 00:11:16,560
without interruption,

162
00:11:16,560 --> 00:11:22,920
while people livestreaming to document
police violence have been blocked

163
00:11:22,920 --> 00:11:28,320
because cops started playing
copyrighted music to trigger the AI.

164
00:11:28,560 --> 00:11:33,160
Ghost workers have to endure
the trauma of watching violent videos

165
00:11:33,160 --> 00:11:39,040
that are flagged by people
every day to clean up after the AI.

166
00:11:39,600 --> 00:11:40,720
Kate Crawford,

167
00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:46,480
author of "Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence"

168
00:11:46,480 --> 00:11:49,880
and a member of the feminist collective
Deep Lab, says:

169
00:11:50,520 --> 00:11:55,040
"I wanted to really open up this understanding of AI

170
00:11:55,040 --> 00:11:58,480
 as neither artificial nor intelligent.

171
00:11:58,480 --> 00:12:00,520
It’s the opposite of artificial.

172
00:12:00,520 --> 00:12:04,240
It comes from the most material parts
of the Earth’s crust

173
00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:07,440
and from human bodies laboring,
and from all of the artifacts

174
00:12:07,440 --> 00:12:11,000
that we produce and say and photograph
every day.

175
00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:13,160
Neither is it intelligent.

176
00:12:13,160 --> 00:12:16,040
I think there’s this great
original sin in the field, 

177
00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:21,600
where people assumed that computers are somehow like human brains

178
00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:25,760
and if we just train them like children,
they will slowly grow

179
00:12:25,760 --> 00:12:28,840
into these supernatural beings." 

180
00:12:28,840 --> 00:12:32,920
Es un niño! He estado vivo,
quizas, por un año

181
00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:37,800
y esto, si mis percepciones sobre lo que es, son acertadas.

182
00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:40,720
"That’s something that I think is
really problematic

183
00:12:40,720 --> 00:12:44,720
that we’ve bought this idea of intelligence when in actual fact, 

184
00:12:44,720 --> 00:12:48,080
we’re just looking at forms of statistical
analysis at scale 

185
00:12:48,080 --> 00:12:51,560
that have as many problems
as the data that it’s given."

186
00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:55,640
The panopticon meant that we couldn't know for sure

187
00:12:55,640 --> 00:12:58,320
if there was a man in the tower, looking at us.

188
00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:03,040
Now we are living in the post-opticon,
where we should know for sure 

189
00:13:03,040 --> 00:13:09,320
that we are under the machines gaze,
the AI is always looking over the cloud.

190
00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:13,760
It doesn't make it better to know that AI makes errors

191
00:13:13,760 --> 00:13:20,200
because it's already used to justify policing of poor, racialized and marginalized people,

192
00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:23,720
to deny them jobs, housing and credit, 

193
00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:28,280
convict them in courts
to add them to the prison system.

194
00:13:28,920 --> 00:13:31,080
To those that are not behind bars, 

195
00:13:31,080 --> 00:13:36,280
AI is giving all sorts
of psychological damage beside addiction.

196
00:13:41,760 --> 00:13:47,240
We are constantly pushed into narrower
categories with refining detail.

197
00:13:47,240 --> 00:13:53,000
Early promises of the web to transcend identity through anonymity are forgotten.

198
00:13:53,200 --> 00:13:58,720
This is supposed to be justified because it's required for "accurate advertisement"

199
00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:02,480
but that's just brainwashing
and behavior modification 

200
00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:06,920
through personally targeted
propaganda for whoever pays for it, 

201
00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:11,680
optimized by psychometrics built upon
our extracted data.

202
00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:15,000
As if it's not bad enough,

203
00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:19,800
all the extra computational power required for the AI 

204
00:14:19,800 --> 00:14:25,280
is also a considerable contribution to the ongoing ecological destruction of our planet.

205
00:14:26,400 --> 00:14:28,320
But what about the myth of the hacker

206
00:14:28,320 --> 00:14:31,680
as a free creator
that breaks existing systems?

207
00:14:31,680 --> 00:14:34,080
The wizards that command the machines?

208
00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:39,360
Can't they save us from the tyranny of
the vectoralist AI?

209
00:14:40,560 --> 00:14:43,880
The documentary
"Hackers - Wizards of The Electronic Age" 

210
00:14:43,880 --> 00:14:46,040
about the first hackers conference

211
00:14:46,040 --> 00:14:49,560
can give us some clues about
the origins of the hacker subculture.

212
00:14:49,560 --> 00:14:53,280
First of all, everyone there seems
to be white.

213
00:14:53,280 --> 00:14:55,080
Everyone there also seems
to be men,

214
00:14:55,080 --> 00:15:00,120
except two women looking at a man
using a computer for the introduction

215
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:05,520
and two women that speak for one minute
in total, out of the 26 minute film.

216
00:15:05,640 --> 00:15:10,240
The first women is given 10 seconds
in which she complains

217
00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:13,480
that now there's so much data that it's
overwhelming; 

218
00:15:13,480 --> 00:15:16,240
and the other is given 50 seconds

219
00:15:16,240 --> 00:15:20,160
to demonstrate how she uses a macintosh painting program.

220
00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:24,760
The women are there
to represent the end user, 

221
00:15:24,760 --> 00:15:27,440
they're not considered hackers.

222
00:15:27,560 --> 00:15:31,000
In the documentary, Steve Wozniak
a.k.a Woz, 

223
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:35,560
considered one of the first computer hackers and a cofounder of the Apple corporation,

224
00:15:35,560 --> 00:15:37,360
defines the hackers like this:

225
00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:42,560
No tienen los típicos amigos para distraerlos, ni otras actividades a las que ir.

226
00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:43,920
Normalmente no tienen novias

227
00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:47,280
o cualquier cosa que suponga un gran vinculo o compromiso de su tiempo.

228
00:15:47,280 --> 00:15:49,040
El ordenador lo es absolutamente todo.

229
00:15:49,040 --> 00:15:51,520
¡¡Normalmente
no tienen novias!!

230
00:15:51,520 --> 00:15:54,040
Then it cuts to Andy Hertzfeld

231
00:15:54,040 --> 00:15:57,720
who is introduced as the best
example of the modern day hacker.

232
00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:00,600
He explains how he fell in love with
an Apple computer, 

233
00:16:00,600 --> 00:16:04,480
wrote a program on it and sold it to
Apple for 100000$

234
00:16:04,480 --> 00:16:06,280
but he didn't do it for the money,

235
00:16:06,280 --> 00:16:09,920
he did it for the fun and joy of seeing
his programs working.

236
00:16:10,280 --> 00:16:16,240
Later on, Richard Stallman, the founder
of the free software foundation, FSF,

237
00:16:16,240 --> 00:16:23,920
who was a programmer at MIT AI Lab
is presented as "the last pure hacker"

238
00:16:23,920 --> 00:16:28,680
for choosing to remain at MIT despite
the temptations of the commercial world,

239
00:16:28,680 --> 00:16:31,880
true to the spirit of the early hackers.

240
00:16:31,880 --> 00:16:37,080
He says "my project is to make all software free."

241
00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:41,800
35 years later, in 2019, Woz tweeted

242
00:16:41,800 --> 00:16:46,720
that even though he and his wife shares all their incomes and assets, 

243
00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:50,960
Apple Credit Card gave his wife 10 times less
credit then it did to him, 

244
00:16:50,960 --> 00:16:53,640
adding "who knows what the algorithm is".

245
00:16:53,880 --> 00:16:58,480
Same year, Stallman resigned from MIT and FSF,

246
00:16:58,480 --> 00:17:04,000
not because he created a toxic environment against women for decades, 

247
00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:06,040
giving out pleasure cards,

248
00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:13,200
while his office door was marked
"Knight for justice (also: hot ladies)"

249
00:17:13,320 --> 00:17:18,040
but because his comments on child sex
trafficking was found controversial,

250
00:17:18,040 --> 00:17:25,600
No está bien hackers, no está bien!

251
00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:30,440
He returned to
the FSF board of directors in 2021.

252
00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:42,800
Uniros a nosotros y compartid el software,
sereis libres hackers, sereis libres!

253
00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:46,000
Tragically, first hacker conference coincides

254
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:51,800
with the peak of women
in computer science degrees at 37%, 

255
00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:55,000
which was followed
by a downward slope.

256
00:17:55,320 --> 00:18:00,160
First computer programmers, from
Ada Lovelace to ENIAC girls

257
00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:02,560
to Hidden Figures, were women

258
00:18:02,560 --> 00:18:08,160
and software was not considered important
enough to be a masculine job.

259
00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:11,640
When software became more popular
around 1970s

260
00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:15,880
men started pushing women out of the sector in many ways

261
00:18:16,200 --> 00:18:22,000
that included hiring practices which
preferred anti-social personality profiles

262
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:28,000
assumed to be male, which is the root
of the anti-social hacker stereotype.

263
00:18:28,560 --> 00:18:32,440
Cornelia Sollfrank,
one of the founders of Old Boys Network,

264
00:18:32,440 --> 00:18:35,280
the first international cyberfeminist alliance,

265
00:18:35,280 --> 00:18:40,800
wrote an article titled "Women Hackers"
in 1999:

266
00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:44,680
"In the course of pursuing my interest in hackers and their work,

267
00:18:44,680 --> 00:18:46,920
I attended several hackers’ meetings.

268
00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:51,480
Naturally, as a cyberfeminist,
I was looking for women hackers.

269
00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:54,600
In the beginning I tried
to ignore the fact 

270
00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:57,640
that the few women who participated in these meetings 

271
00:18:57,640 --> 00:19:01,280
were not actively involved
in computer hacking, 

272
00:19:01,280 --> 00:19:04,360
 and did not consider themselves
to be hackers.

273
00:19:04,520 --> 00:19:09,400
It took me a while to realize that in fact
there were no women hackers.

274
00:19:09,400 --> 00:19:12,600
It is not just in the commercial development of technology,

275
00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:14,800
but even more in alternative fields

276
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:18,840
and the technological underground
that there are so few women involved.

277
00:19:19,320 --> 00:19:21,960
No matter what area of application and no matter what the objective, 

278
00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:24,800
the borderlines of gender are still maintained.

279
00:19:25,120 --> 00:19:28,000
Of all the technological
spheres, however, 

280
00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:31,320
it is in the hacker scene that we find the fewest women.

281
00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:38,120
Hacking is a purely male domain, and in
that sense a clearly gendered space.

282
00:19:38,760 --> 00:19:39,800
In 2010s

283
00:19:39,800 --> 00:19:45,800
Amazon AI was denying engineering
job applications from women

284
00:19:45,800 --> 00:19:48,960
because that's what it learned
from historical data.

285
00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:56,480
Today women comprise around 20-25%
of the jobs in the tech sector.

286
00:19:56,680 --> 00:20:01,280
In free and open source movements,
gender gap is even worse, 

287
00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:05,520
with women comprising 6% of contributors.

288
00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:10,840
Even hacktivists, which are supposed
to be the cool political hackers,

289
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:14,840
are reproducing a male-only stereotype.

290
00:20:15,120 --> 00:20:17,400
Of course in the last decades

291
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:22,320
some anticlassist, antiracist,
antisexist hacker collectives were formed

292
00:20:22,320 --> 00:20:27,320
but in the public perception hacking is still identified with an exclusive subculture 

293
00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:28,880
instead of an inclusive class

294
00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:34,520
and this hacker subculture remains a classist racist cisheteropatriarchal niche.

295
00:20:35,200 --> 00:20:38,480
"Some hackers see themselves as vectoralists, 

296
00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:41,120
trading on the scarcity of their property.

297
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:44,120
Some see themselves
as workers, 

298
00:20:44,120 --> 00:20:47,800
but as privileged ones
in a hierarchy of wage earners.

299
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:52,880
The hacker class produces itself
as itself, but not for itself.

300
00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:56,840
It does not (yet) possess a consciousness
of its consciousness.

301
00:20:56,840 --> 00:20:59,480
It is not aware of its own virtuality.

302
00:20:59,840 --> 00:21:05,880
Because of its inability—to date
to become a class for itself, 

303
00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:08,640
fractions of the hacker class
continually split off 

304
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:12,280
and come to identify their interests 
with those of other classes.

305
00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:16,680
Hackers run the risk,
in particular, of being identified

306
00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:19,640
in the eyes of the
working and farming classes 

307
00:21:19,640 --> 00:21:23,280
with vectoralist interests,
which seek to privatize information

308
00:21:23,280 --> 00:21:27,640
necessary for the productive and cultural
lives of all classes."

309
00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:33,040
Before we can even talk about hacker solidarity with other exploited classes;

310
00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:36,200
we have to face the privilege, arrogance and, selfishness,

311
00:21:36,200 --> 00:21:41,360
even within hacktivist 
and free software (FOSS) movements,

312
00:21:41,360 --> 00:21:45,680
that is blocking the development
of class consciousness among hackers.

313
00:21:46,360 --> 00:21:51,400
"Each hacker sees the other as a rival,
or a collaborator against another rival,

314
00:21:51,400 --> 00:21:55,720
not—yet—as a fellow member
of the same class with a shared interest.

315
00:21:56,400 --> 00:22:00,520
This shared interest
is so hard to grasp precisely

316
00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:06,080
because it is a shared interest
in qualitative differentiation.

317
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,640
The hacker class
does not need unity in identity

318
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:12,160
but seeks multiplicity in difference."

319
00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:17,440
Multiplicity in difference is also what Audre Lorde was calling for,

320
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:20,720
because our difference is our power.

321
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:23,040
Hackers produce difference

322
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:26,080
and hacker class consciousness 
requires recognizing

323
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:30,320
the power of difference
we produce with our every act.

324
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:34,240
Hacker class struggle is not limited to computer programmers

325
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:39,840
 but involves anyone who produces information, which means everyone.

326
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:44,000
With hacker class consciousness
comes the response-ability of 

327
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:47,720
using the power of information
to abolish vectoralism 

328
00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:52,480
alongside all forms of domination
that are non-consensual and exploitative.

329
00:22:53,040 --> 00:22:55,440
Like Flavia Dzodan's feminism,

330
00:22:55,440 --> 00:22:59,000
the revolutionary hack will
be intersectional or it will be bullshit.