ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief historical sketch of the ethical questions and values that have influenced activist computer professionals, engineers, designers and hobbyist amateurs, and the signature issues they have defended. Several main types of alternative computing projects and interventions that have carried this ethos forward in current media culture are discussed, including the longstanding tradition of hacking and hacktivism; design activism; and data activism. If hacktivism and design activism are notable for intervening in computing devices and systems, or in the computer-mediated places, objects and activities of everyday life, data activism focuses on the fundamental commodities and products of digital culture and communication: data and algorithms. Instead of litigation and policy advocacy, the Free Software Foundation promotes free, open-source technology development among programmers, engineers and designers. The hacker ethos, design activism and data activism seek to change not only the perceptions, opinions, attitudes and action of individuals, but to transform the very material conditions of human communication itself.
