To Hack in Italy Ethnographic Notes on HackIt - Hack Meeting 2007

This paper examines the broader political climate surrounding some Italian hackers communities that organize the annual hack meeting. When Italian people began to hack, the first thing that they learned was that computing was fun. Going around inside a machine, hacking it, sharing passion and line-code with friends was a tantalizing activity in the 80’s. But these emerging technologies were targeted by counter-hegemonic and strongly politicized groups as one of the tools of increasing control over society. Denouncing an overwhelming, embedded, presence of the state in everyday tasks (such as phoning, or traveling with private or public transportation), semi-legal, often anti-globalization, groups strongly supported hackers, sometimes strongly inviting them to join their political view. Hacking in Italy is nowadays perceived as subversive and resistant to mainframe activity. The concept of hacking is now in question under discussion: you can find Italian hacking groups that propose security breaking, anonymising, intellectual property issues, but also other issues seemingly or completely unrelated to hacking (like how to build a cheap wi-fi antenna, or how to bake home made bread). Enlisting ethnographic data obtained at a hacker meeting in Pisa (Italy) in September 2007, and through followup interviews with hackers in the months after the meeting, this paper explores the terrain of hacking in Italy. The rhetoric of rehabilitation, the retrieval of the lost skills, of the re-possession of a conversational place that was “taken” by big corporations, is nowadays the ground of most of Italian hackers communities.