GENOME HACKERS. REBEL BIOLOGY, OPEN SOURCE AND SCIENCE ETHIC

Crack the code, share your data, have fun, save the world, be independent, become famous and make a lot of money. The remix between the Mertonian ethic of 20th century science and the hacker ethic is producing an emergent open science culture that is redefining the relation between researchers, scientific institutions and intellectual property is redefined. The case studies, analysed through extensive media analysis, interviews and participatory observation, include the open access turn of the American biologist Craig Venter, the rebellion of the Italian virologist Ilaria Capua against WHO data sharing policies and the emergence of citizen biology projects that explicitly refer to the hacking history. In these cases the problem of access to and sharing of the data emerge as a crucial public issue, and open science tools such as open databases, open access journals and open platforms for data sharing are used. Finally, they operate in different and often opposing institutional settings. These biologists can be a rich model for current transformations in both life sciences and informational capitalism. They use open access tools but also rebel against bureaucracy and claim independence from both academic and corporate institutions. Autonomy, independence and radical openness coexist with other elements such as a radical refusal of interference coming from both academic and corporate incumbents. They insist on bare information as good per se, as long as it is shared and accessible. They rebel against the mechanisms of scholarly publishing and peer review. In some cases they express an explicit drive towards profit and entrepreneurship. Their public images are part of a transformation that involves the proprietary structure of scientific information - who owns and disposes of biological data and knowledge? - and challenges the institutional environment in which biological research takes place. Open science means both open to more participation and cooperation and open to a more diverse set of modes of capitalist appropriation.