zines - book - 2001 - Zines

Zines
Liz Farrelly
Booth-Clibborn Editions
2001
265 pages

    Hiya!  I borrowed Zines, edited by Liz Farrley, from the Toronto Zine Library.

Two books about zines have already been profiled on this blog, Make a Zine!: When Words and Graphics Collide by Joe Biel and Bill Brent, and Stolen Sharpie Revolution by Alex Wrekk.  Liz Farrelly’s Zines takes a different approach, from that of the previous authors, to the subject of self-publishing. The first two books profiled have been how-to guides for potential zinesters. Zines on the other hand prominently displays the final results of the zine-making process.  Liz Farrelly worked as design editor for Booth-Clibborn Editions, a British publisher of books about fine art, design, and visual culture.  In addition to her design work, Farrelly has written or edited a number of books and articles about design, and she also contributes occasionally to the design-focused Eye blog. In the book Zines, Farrelly takes the designer approach to her subject matter, which she treats as a form of visual culture rather than as a kind of literature or craft activity.

Zines is a visual book.  It draws from a worldly selection of zines, some of which are well known and all of which are graphically interesting, and puts them on display.  I am not familiar with most of the zines represented in the book, so I do not know if any of the images are altered from their original setting.  Many of the images in Zines are coloured, while most zines are photocopy productions in black and white.  Perhaps Zines gives black and white images a coloured background, perhaps Farrelly et. al. selected zines with more colourful imagery for their book.  Out of the two zines that Farrelly featured that I am familiar with, the clip-art zine Craphound and the Canadian urban-exploration zine Infiltration, the images are in their original black and white.  

Each page of Zines feature images, taken from handmade publications, that are unaccompanied by any relevant information.  Instead of clouding the page with details, each new featured zine contains an index number, formatted as 01z, for example, which refers back to an entry in a guide near the front of the book.  Each entry includes a publication cover and a short profile of the source zine.  This guide is the only text in the book, it provides details about format, title, location and year of publication, and it also includes a brief statement about why the zine featured in the book.  There is very little information about the materials, and while the inside cover of the book says that Zines is a “vivid yet analytical account of DIY publishing,” that statement is untrue.  The book is a vivid representation of the innovative visual work that has appeared in zines over the past twenty years, but it is not analytic.  It is instead a stream of disparate images, united in theme only by an underlying DIY ethos, without any information or statements regarding artist intention or image context (to name only two possible research concerns).

Zines is notable among zine books for taking a different approach to its subject matter.  Most books I have seen discuss zines as a subcultural practice or as a kind of writing.  Images from 89 different zines are represented in this book, often in full page displays.  Some ‘zines’ included are actually handmade books, and Farrelly will often display these books as objects.  The representation of the varying levels of the source material may serve to connect the images, in the reader's imagination,  to their original format.  The images displayed are decontextualized, and while in this book the images appear as an array of drawings, collage, and low-fi photographs, originally each image was likely set into a thematic system of publication content.  To display the zine as an object, alongside its decontextualized visual content, may remind the readers of Zines of what the images came from. 

red army faction - film - 2008 - The Baader-Meinhof Complex

The Baader Meinhoff Complex
2008
150 minutes
directed by Uli Edel

   The Baader-Meinhoff Complex is a 2008 film directed by the German director, Uli Edel, who I otherwise only know from a mediocre 1989 film adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr’s novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn.  In this film he creates a partial and fragmented dramatic history of the Red Army Faction which serves to display them as violent freedom fighters without much critique of their methods.  The result is that quasi-Marxist terrorists are portrayed as the heroes of an action movie.  Whether or not this was the director’s intention was unclear, but this film conveys a similar cinematic vocabulary to the Star Wars films. 

The Red Army Faction were a group of West German based Marxist rebels active during the 1960s into the 1970s.  The RAF believed in armed struggle and may be interpreted as a European analogue to a similar American group called The Weathermen. The title of this film referrs to the alternative name for the group, the Baader-Meinhoff gang, referring to its two best known members, Andreas Baader, and Ulrike Meinhoff.  The film depicts these two figures as engaged in a dialectical struggle of thought vs action which is a perrennial issue manifest in the rhetoric of activism.  Ulrike Meinhoff was a brilliant journalist with far-left leanings who became the intellectual voice of the group while Baader was a criminal with little education, and formed the id of the group consciousness.  Baader is represented as uninterested in political concerns in any way that does not appear superficial, and rather appears to sense that action is the most important course to take.  

While Baader and Meinhof appear to represent the two poles of the group, (and serve as metaphors for the two poles of all of radical politics) there is a third major character, Klassen Grundun, poised between the two best known group members, who may actually represent the axel of the unstable unit.  In Edel’s film, Grundun nurtures Baader’s will to violence, even if its directed towards ridiculous gestures such as an arson attack on a department store.  Grudnen also shames Meinhoff into committing to violent revolutionary action by ridiculing her profession.  Finally, Gruden pacifies Baader when he succumbs to his rage at group meetings, and recalls the exact perfect Mao Tse-Tung quotation to recite to the group to steel their resolve in a hard time.  She is the unacknowledged force that drives the group, while Baader is portrayed as the same kind of reckless wildman  archetype that propels every movie.

The film goes from scene to scene depicting the most dramatic periods of the group’s existence, without getting bogged down in any socio-political details that might take away from its pace or action.  Bombings, retaliations, the capture of the RAF by police, trial and deaths as well as a few episodes from the 2nd and 3rd generations of the RAF are all depicted, transposed into movie convention reasonably well by Edel.  The origins of the group are uncertain in the film, Ulrike Meinhoff appears to join the Red Army Faction sometime after an encounter with an incarcerated Gunden, but otherwise the terrorist cell appeared to have already existed, already bombing things that have no connection to their political cause.  So any reason for its existence is left unstated, and they appear to commit acts of politically motivated violence for unspecified or poorly articulated reasons.  Occasional quotes from Meinhoff’s writings aside, the intellectual side of the group is subsumed in the film by the spectacle of explosions.  The RAF’s prehistory, the allusion that these were the children of the Third Riech, generation, is a mere statement on the back of the DVD case.  It may be something worth exploring, but it’s not given any meaning in the film.  Instead, the group’s post-formation history is mined as a source of action packed scenes with the terrorists poised as heroes.

Edel’s film displays a terrorist group that is active in a Western democracy without justifying its existence.  Still, Edel constructs his RAF characters as sympathetic figures simply by humanizing them while portraying the police they fight with as nameless hordes.  The Red Army Faction appear as youthful, energetic fighters, while their enemies are the anonymous henchmen of old men who sit and dryly plot at a conference table.  

    The historical significance of the RAF can be set aside, really, as this film is little more than an action movie that unfortunately takes a complicated semi-Marxist terrorist organization as its subject matter.  In real life, police authority and liberal-democratic social organization continues to dominate western countries.  Recent films that use countercultural groups, if not armed rebel movements such as the RAF, as their subject matter, consistently portray such groups sympathetically, if not outright heroically.  Why is there such disparity between dramatic representations of such subject matter, and actual social attitudes towards the sorts of groups being represented?

book - 2001 - Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader

Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader
Chris Kraus and Sylvère Lotringer (editors)
2001
Semiotext(e)
421 pages

Semiotext(e) is an American publishing company founded by French expatriate, Sylvère Lotringer, with at least a thirty year history of producing interesting and high quality texts on a wide array of topics.  Semiotext(e) began in the mid-to-late 1970s as a journal of cultural theory, however in the early 1980s the journal became a book publisher of radical political theory, avant-garde fiction, and postmodern philosophy.  Semiotext(e) was also, in fact, one of the first publishers to bring translations of French cultural theory to American markets.  Thinkers like Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard owe some of the credit for their ascendancy in North American scholarship to Semiotext(e).  

    Hatred of Capitalism, first published shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, contains a collection of brief texts that represent much of the eclectic publisher’s repertoire.  The reader including writings on radical politics by European (see text by German RAF terrorist, Ulrike Meinhoff) and American activists (see Black Panther member,  Assata Shakur)  and brief works of cultural theory by thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault, Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Jean-Francois Lyotard.  Short pieces by a number of other writers are also present, including associate of filmmaker John Waters’, Cookie Mueller, the surrealist philosopher Georges Battaille, and the transgressive writers Kathy Acker and her literary godfather, William S Burroughs.  These readings are collected into a number of sections grouped according to a vague literary theme.

The book was published following an agreement made between Semiotext(e) and MIT Press for the latter to distribute the books of the former.  This agreement followed the dissolution of an alliance between Semiotext(e) and the Brooklyn NY based anarchist publisher Autonomedia, which produced a number of great books.  Not represented in Hatred of Capitalism, then, are the books with titles that reference Semiotext(e) but were possibly published more a result of Autonomedia’s work - including the radio-themed Jim Flemming-edited volume, Radiotext(e). Also missing are any excerpts from the far reaching anthology, Semiotext(e) USA, which seemed to be a product of Lotringer’s contacts with French theorists and the Autonomedia contacts with American underground writers and mail artists. The status of these books with regards to the Semiotext(e) catalogue is unclear, but they contained some great material and it is unfortunate that they are not represented in Hatred of Capitalism.  Meanwhile, other early anthologies, such as the book Polysexuality, edited by François Peraldi (a now deceased Canadian psychoanalyst), and the recently republished The German Issue, are heavily represented.

The bulk of Hatred of Capitalism is made up of the writings of reputable philosophers, writers, and radicals, whose current reknown (and certainly already by 2001) has extended well beyond the Semiotext(e) milieu.  The presence of these writers make the reading of this volume worthwhile, especially since many pieces are culled from the very early, difficult to find Semiotext(e) journals of the late 1970s.  It seems like some pieces are present simply so a particular theorist is represented, such as the Jean-François Lyotard piece titled ‘Energumen Capitalism’ which is largely an expression of approval for the work of Deleuze and Guattari.  What I most appreciated about Hatred of Capitalism, however, were the pieces of creative writing, which were quite good, and which I previously ignored when browsing the company’s catalogue.  Furthermore, some pieces are from books that I cannot find in the Semiotext(e) catalogue, and were likely never published, making Hatred of Capitalism the only source for certain materials.

This book is relevant as a survey of Semiotext(e)'s publishing history, but it also relevant for denoting  how a book publisher can be a site for a number of divergent radical tendencies.  Semiotext(e) has been, since the early 1980s, a preeminent book publisher with regards to a number of strains of countercultural activity.  The company has consistently published strong and critical texts in the fields of fiction, philosophy, politics and art.  Also Semiotext(e) has been a site of convergence for a radical academia and street activism and arts.   Hatred of Capitalism allows a reader to glimpse these aspects of the publisher’s decades long mission.





 

revolution - book - 1971 - Revolutionaries: Agents of Change

James Haskins

Revolutionaries: Agents of Change
James Haskins
J.B. Lippincott Company
1971
224 pages

I borrowed this book from the Toronto Public Library.  It’s author, James Haskins, wrote many books over his career (which ended with his death in 2005), many of them focusing on African American culture and achievement, and many of his books are meant to be read by adolescent readers.  Revolutionaries: Agents of Change, is one of the books targeting younger readers, it is a collection of eleven chapters, each of which is a brief biography of a well known revolutionary figure.  These chapters are concise and easy to read, and they stay on topic, focusing primarily upon the details of the lives of these men that pertain to their revolutionary actions.  

Haskins' choice in revolutionaries runs a wide spectrum of, mostly, twentieth century men (there were no women selected for this book) from a variety of cultures and contexts.  The author's revolutionaries are: Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Karl Marx, Robespierre, Kemal Ataturk, Mao Tse-Tung, Patrick Henry, Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, and George Washington.  Many of Haskens choices were successful in achieving their revolutionary aims, and Haskins does not shy away from discussing them as both heroic figures, and, when its relevant, as dictators.  His book seems fairly brave in its inclusion of Marx and those he inspired, including enemies such as Minh and Castro, who were enemies of the United States at the time of this work’s publication - and I suspect that his desire to bring them into contact with men such as the American revolutionary heroes Patrick Henry and George Washington, was to demonstrate the transcendant power of the revolutionary spirit.  

There is a sense that the book was thriving on the radical spirit of its time.  The book was published in 1971 when violent struggle had achieved a kind of dominance within American activism. Perhaps Haskins intention for his book was to retrieve a selection of men from the images they had become and return the charge they once carried back to them.  Haskins revolutionaries were, for the most part, advocates for violent struggle if they not directly engaged in it.  The tradition of non-violent resistance is absent from Haskins book, which I suspect is a deliberate choice although I have no insight into possible motivations for such a decision.  Mahatma Ghandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the two figures who represent non-violent struggle to the world, are missing from the text. 

computer hackers - book - 2010 - Phone Losers of America

Phone Losers of America
Brad Carter
Big Beef Bueno Books
2010
297 pages

This book is part of a trend of 1980s/90s hack/phreak textfile groups who are printing anthologies or memoirs of their histories.  In 2006 the Cult of the Dead Cow published The Book of Cao, an anthology of their txt files, while 2600 magazine (which has always a print magazine rather than a t-phile group) has published a ‘best of’ anthology in addition to an anthology of letters sent by readers titled Dear Hacker.  Phone Losers of America is different from these other books in that it is a memoir, rather than an anthology, of Brad Carter (aka RedBoxChilliPepper) and his phone/hacker related pranks and adventures.

    Brad Carter is the spiritual figurehead of the Phone Losers of America, otherwise referred to as the PLA.  The PLA can be interpreted as a loose confederation of telephone prankster hackers who use www.phonelosers.org and its discussion forums as their headquarters.  The PLA can also be thought of as Brad Carter and his friends, and the PLA mission may include anything amusing that they do.  In addition to authoring this book, and editing (as well as writing, for the most part) 46 PLA .txt files, Carter also sporadically releases episodes of two different podcasts: PLA Radio, and Big Beef Bueno Podcast, and hosts the prank call focused radio program, The Phone Show.  Carter’s activities are significant in the hacker world in that he and his associates eschew the white-grey hat hacker ethical pretensions in favour of exploiting the new frontier of network telecommunications as a vast forum for pranks and obnoxious behavior.  

Carter’s text is divided into 23 chapters of varying formats.  The PLA are known for embellishing their texts with dramatic or comedic flourish, and while Carter presents his book as a memoir, it begins with a brief bit of fiction about himself (named Alex in the text) and a friend. The pair were dumpster diving at a local telco office one night when a garbage truck picked up a dumpster while his friend was hiding in it.  Alex fled town, believing that his friend, Doug, had died, and in flight his PLA adventures began.  Following this opening, the each of the subsequent chapters (with some deviation) delve into a particular prank that Carter has pulled, either by himself or with accomplices.  Some chapters recall the targetting of a particularly notable rube, some of whom are familiar to follwers of PLA forums or radio.  Many of the chapters are re-written PLA text files detailing phonehijinks with cordless phones and other things, but some are escapades from after the text-file era, for example Carter’s replacement of a sign on a lawn of a McDonalds.  Carter painstakingly mimiced the logo and the format of a sign that read “Our Team is Empowered to Guarantee Your Satisfaction” to instead read “Our Team is Well Endowed to Guarantee Your Pleasure”.  This episode is unique in that it did not directly involve the internet or telephone in any way, but it is the sort of adventure Carter devoted much of his time to.

Many of Carter’s chapters detail activities that were meant to amuse.  In the chapter titled 'eBay Feedback', for example, Carter notes that he has been a frequent user of eBay for many years, and that at some point he decided to play with the comments section.  Carter would leave strange or silly comments on another sellers profile, with regards to a purchase, while leaving their seller rating intact.  While this is an internet based prank, rather than telephone based, it reminds me of something I read about the legality of prank phone calls.  I’ve read that the reason no one has ever been convicted of making prank phone calls is because making a call for the purposing of amusing the callee fits within the bounds of correct telephone use.  

Travel is another theme of Phone Losers of America.  Carter moved frequently around the United States, and as he described in a chapter titled ‘Homelessness’, he occasionally lived without a home and instead lived in bus stations or his vehicle.  In addition to this, Carter described (in a chapter that I’m not sure is fiction or not) acquiring free air-travel within the united states via credit card fraud.  Carter’s textual identity is certainly unstable, but he positions himself as alternating between jet-set fraudster, and nihilistic vagabond prankster.  

    Phone Losers of America is interesting because it embraces an aspect of the computer underground that is unacknowledged by most books about hackers.  That is the potential for fun and mischief that a dominant reliance on computer technology has opened.  Unlike Michael Calce in Mafiaboy, Brad Carter does not present Alex as interested in showing off his technological prowess or driven for the hidden knowledge that lies somewhere beyond a password prompt.  Alex appears to be motivated by a desire to laugh at the anger of others.  He he disregards emerging forms of etiquette and directs most of his technological knowledge towards achieve this. 

vagabondia - book - 2009 - Dwelling Portably: 1990-1999

Dwelling Portably: 1990-1999
Bert and Holly Davis
Microcosm Publishing
2009
164 pages


This book is one of three volumes that anthologize the Message Post/Dwelling Portably print newsletter.  MP/DP is a handmade publication full of practical lifestyle tips for people who ‘dwell portably’, or in otherwords, live without a house.  The publication has run since 1980, and continues to be published by the Davises for the benefit of a loose community of proactively homeless people.  This post pertains to the second volume which contains all of the issues of the newsletter published between February 1990 and ending in November 1999.  

The book contains no introduction, or afterword, or table of contents.  The book is simply the content of the newsletters, as they originally appeared (presumably), with an index at the back to help the reader find needed tips.  All of the text is written in courier typeface and all of the images are hand-drawn diagrams or illustrations.  Each newsletter appears exactly like it would have, with a unique heading, subscription/contact information, and a publication date.  The individual newsletters vary in length, from 2 to 10 pages.  The editors of the newsletter are Bert and Holly Davis, presumably a couple who live an ascetic lifestyle.  Much of the content is submitted by others who live similar lifestyles and wish to share their tips, with occasional tips or responses to submissions written by Bert and/or Holly Davis.  Some items are taken from camping magazines or other related publications.

Dwelling Portably is interesting for a number of reasons.  The publication points to a community of people who desire homelessness and share tips on how to thrive without a house or many of the amenities offered by post-industrial consumer society.  Bert and Holly, I think, live in a yurt, while many of their submissions come from people who live in cars or busses, in small tents with bicycles, in tree-shelters, or any number of variations.  Also many of the entries contain practical information about tools, cooking, bedding, insulation, transportation, and re-purposing found materials for this kind of lifestyle.  Many other entries deal with things like how to discourage potential assailants, how to deal with police who do not understand such lifestyles, etc.  The entries I, personally found to be most interesting, were those that contained detailed descriptions for how such lives are lived.  Many submitters described renovated old buses or vans for living (which recalls Dishwasher Pete’s description of his renovated van) some travelled on bicycle with a small tent with them and one man described life while travelling on horseback.  These entries were not necessarily meant as lifestyle tips but perhaps rather as indications of possibility.

Some messages are very short and are requests for information on how to live a certain lifestyle that relates to the theme of ‘dwelling portably’.  Someone may write stating that they would like information on how to live on a boat, or how to ride the rails successfully (see Ted Conover, Rolling Nowhere) for example.  The inclusion of such requests suggests that the Message Post/Dwelling Portably newsletter is a chief point of connection between the people who live this way.  

One interesting implication of Dwelling Portably is that the publication presents an alternative form of survivalism to the more apocalyptic second-amendment obsessed ultra-right wing milieu that the term usually applies to.  When attitudes are expressed, Dwelling Portably is upbeat about light living, and otherwise the newsletter simply wants to provide some helpful tips.  The publication is by and for people who already live survivalist lifestyles, and it does not need to declare that it is necessary to know this stuff in order to weather an impending Armageddon.  The people who ‘dwell portably’ and contribute to the newsletter approach their lifestyle with more of a 1960s ‘drop-out’ attitude.  They aren’t preparing for war or catastrophic scarcity, they have chosen such a lifestyle because it suits them.  

Dwelling Portably: 1990-1999 is the middle of three volumes of collected newsletters.  I suspect that the other two are similar in format, although I am curious about the practical matters of publishing the newsletter itself and I hope that one of the other books contains such information.  Bert and Holly speak about their own circumstances occasionally, although usually in response to an idea another writer had, or to address a practical issue such as bathing or waste disposal.  They move occasionally and the inside of the book’s back cover contains an email address from which a reader may receive their mailing address.  I would like to know how they manage publishing a newsletter themselves while they move, and sending it to a readership who may, in part at least, do the same. 

anarcho-syndicalism - book - 1918/1966 - Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism

Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism
Bertrand Russell
Unwin Books
1918/1966
143 pages

Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism was first published in 1918 when the words in his title applied to large scale social movements rather than distant ideologies.  It's author speaks of anarchism, syndicalism and socialism in the present tense, and refers to then recent events which are now historic.   In 1918 things were happening, syndicalism was popular and the lives of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin had ended not so long ago.  The author of Roads to Freedom, Bertrand Russell, was polymath born of an aristocratic family.  He held sympathies with socialism, anarchism and syndicalism which he expressed in detail in this slim volume.  Russell was an avowed socialist at times in his life, and he occasionally returned to that subject in his writing throughout his career.

The first three chapters of Roads to Freedom comprise a section of the book titled ‘Historical’, which delves into the theories of Socialism (as they were derived from Marx and Engels), anarchism, (as derived from Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin) and anarcho-syndicalism. In this text syndicalism appears to be the political philosophy the author is most sympathetic with, as he focused much of his writing on the formation and activities of trade unions, discussing the potential robustness of a society as managed by and for workers.  This section of the book finds its author attempting to find the historical origins for the political theories he discusses, delving into the lives of the originating philosophers, as well as summarizing their ideas.  Russell, despite his aristocratic roots, poses as advocate for some of these political ideals, particularly socialism and syndicalism.

The second section of the book, ‘Problems of the Future’, is focused on the practical matters of managing societies based around the ideologies of socialism, anarchism or syndicalism.  Russell evaluates a number of important social and cultural questions against each set of ideals. Furthermore he interrogates the idealism behind certain aspects of these ideologies.  For example he argues against the naive notion, still propounded by contemporary anarchists, that crime is the result of the capitalist system - he argues that many forms of crime will persist and were the world to turn to anarchism, the question would become how to deal with it in a society based on an anti-authoritarian ethos.  Furthermore, he asks how are practical matters such as the arts to be supported under these systems, how is the defense of a country possible.  He attempts to imagine the pros and cons of how each issue would be dealt with under each ideological system as it stood in the early 20th century.  Furthermore, Russell does not simply raise issues but attempts to imagine workable answers to his own queries.  

Russell’s book is an impressive analysis of the early 20th century European left.  He took the ideologies of the left seriously, and while maintaining a sympathy with the spirit of these political systems he provides a positive critique on the practical matters that these systems would have to face, were they ever implemented as a system for broad social organization.  Colin Ward’s Anarchy in Action, a history of the actual implementation of anarchist principles in various times and places, may serve as an interesting companion text for comparison to Russell’s strong analysis.

computer hackers - book - 2008 - Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man

Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man 
Michael Calce and Craig Silverman
Penguin
2008
277 pages


Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man, details the life of a Canadian teen-aged computer enthusiast, Michael Calce, who entered the underground world of hackers under the alias Mafiaboy.  In February 2000, when Calce was 15 years old, he was arrested by the RCMP after a series of brazen attacks on high-profile websites such as cnn.com.  Mafiaboy is a memoir which recalls the thrill of hacking computers, the feeling of power that can be acquired by a knowledge-hungry youth who understands computer systems, and the fear experienced once their activities have been halted by force.  Furthermore, the book contains warnings about the current state of “cybercrime” that extend beyond boundaries of a subculture of occasionally malicious computer nerds, into the realm of organized crime.


Like most contemporary memoirs, Michael Calce worked with a journalist, Craig Silverman, to produce this textual account of the Mafiaboy exploits.  Silverman is a Montreal based journalist who manages the www.regrettheerror.com website, which details journalistic errors in print and broadcast news.  Otherwise, according to his website profile, Silverman has organized ‘Hacks/Hackers Toronto and Montreal’, which are meetings between ‘hacks’ or journalists, and ‘hackers’ or subversive computer geeks.  Calce and Silverman, together create the story of the hacker as an exciting yet cautionary tale of teen-aged technology-driven hubris.  Finally, the book won the 2009 Aurthur Ellis award for best non-fiction crime writing, an award given by the Crime Writers of Canada


The text begins with an account of the hours surrounding the moment of Calce’s arrest, for his Internet activities, by the RCMP in an affluent Montreal suburb .  The narrative then jumps back to the hacker’s early family history as he discussed his successful parents and their eventual divorce.  Calce constructs himself as the paradigm of a hacker profile that has existed since the term ‘hacker’ was first applied to the malicious computer-loving youth in the early 1980s.  Adolescent, male, middle-class suburban, from a broken home, prone to insolent behavior, these attributes have been the stereotypical hacker since the early BBS days, when graduate students started studying the, “computer underground”.   Mafiaboy reads as though Calce may be, in part, telling us about his parent’s divorce and his change in attitude following the death of his best friend, to almost demonstrate that he was fated to go down the hacker path.  

    
Calce and Silverman also include a brief history of hacking as part of their text.   Much of their history chapter is derived from Stephen Levy’s book, Hackers and some other books that detail the lineage of the cultural practice.  Perhaps this history aspect is included so that Calce can position himself as a point of convergence between the hacker subculture dating back to the 1960s, and his own family history of success in business but failure in family.  

Elsewhere in the text, Calce rues his personal inability to keep his mouth shut about his own exploits. Like most transgressive subcultures, respect is given to individual hackers who break laws.  The level of respect given to the transgressor is based on the scale and scope of their crimes.  Hackers are notorious for bragging about their exploits and once Calce began to successfully disrupt the services on major websites, he felt compelled to tell others.  This behaviour, of course, got him into trouble with (international) law enforcement.  Hackers have been noted for having a need to have their accomplishments, and their knowledge, acknowledged and respected by others.  There are unofficial hierarchies that form within the hacker subculture based on an individual's knowledge and level of skill with regards to using computer technologies.  The interesting thing about this aspect of the text is that this book, at its core, can be read as an expression of a continuous need for such recognition in Calce.  Mafiaboy was characterized by other hackers, and by the prosecuting attorney at his trial, as a relatively unskilled “script kiddie”.  “Scipt Kiddie” is a term used by the hacker subculture that referrs to individuals who call themselves hackers but use pre-made hacking tools to wreak their havoc, rather than relying upon their own abilities.  


The current wikipedia article for ‘Mafiaboy’ continues to refer to him as a ‘script kiddie’.  Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man, seems to repeat a need felt by Calce to have his skills recognized.  The former hacker seems at pains to explain that he did know computers, he did have prodigious computer skills, and he did have an intense need to understand them which drove his development.  The implicit expression of this need for approval and understanding is probably the most interesting aspect of the text.  This entire confessional is a grand return to the boastful hacker spirit, Calce needs us to know, as a young adult in 2008, how good he was with computers - and the extent of his will to do wrong with them - back in 2000, when he was in his early teens.


The Mafiaboy story moves through his trial, his detainment, and ends with him being reuinited with his friends after a (relatively) brief period of incarceration in a youth detention facility.  The book ends with warnings about a new frontier in computer crime emerging from Russia that comes from the Russian mafia providing salaries to unemployed Russian computer programmers who can use their skills to extort money from North American Internet users.  Calce and Silverman are suggesting what is on the horizon for cybercrime, and also perhaps suggesting that what Calce did back in the year 2000 was nothing compared to what may happen today to the average internet user.

vagabondia - book - 1993 - The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City
Jennifer Toth
Chicago Review Press
1993
267 pages


Hello out there in Interville!  I purchased The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City, from Seekers Books, located on the corner of Bloor st. West and Borden st. in the Annex neighborhood of Toronto.

The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels beneath New York City, is the best known work by journalist Jennifer Toth.  The text is intended as a journalistic account of the homeless people who live in makeshift communities in the underground infrastructure of New York City.  Toth creates an uneven view of the people who live there without clearly delineating them as a unique population within the larger group that is the city’s homeless.  The various chapters of her book are defined by encounters with particular individuals.  Chapter two, for example, is called “Seville’s Story”, wherein Toth discussed the situation of a particular man, while other chapters cover more broad aspects of the underground population.  Another example, chapter 22, “Women”, is broken up into short stories separated under headings of the first names of a number of women with whom Toth spoke.  

Aspects of the text are interesting, especially those parts where Toth describes the methods used by the underground dwellers for acquiring resources, or the living arrangements of particular individuals.  Much of the book appears as brief and superficial newspaper pieces about particular encounters with tunnel inhabitants.  This style of writing is especially emphasized when she introduces an individual a second time in the text, as she does with officer Bryan Henry, who appears early in the text and again towards its end.  Otherwise much of the book describes a number of encounters with the underground homeless without adding any new insights into the experience of being homeless, or of the unique nature of underground living.

Furthermore, a number of aspects of tunnel life that a reader may infer exist are merely alluded to, and never witnessed by Toth. There seems to be an issue with these kinds of texts where an author attempts to enter into a marginal social world.  The author appears to become a privileged outsider.  Toth is given access to components of the tunnel communities but is also shielded from their harsher aspects.  Violence, for example, is repeatedly referred to, by the discovery of a body, mentioned early in the book, and in conversation with a number of the tunnel dwellers.  Toth, however, never witnesses anything.  Something similar appears to be at play in Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere, however Conover dedicated himself to living the hobo lifestyle for a matter of months, and he witnessed violence, he just was never afflicted by it. (sidenote: Conover and Toth’s books both contain descriptions of violence by youths on the vulnerable poor).  Towards the end of the text, Toth is threatened by a tunnel dweller she thought she had befriended because he believed that she witnessed a murder he committed.  This situation, although quite serious for Toth at the time, approached an absurd horizon, as it created the implication that there’s a continuum of brutal behavior beneath these streets and her only encounter with it was a misunderstanding.

Toth’s book is an interesting introduction to this subject matter, however the potentially most interesting aspects seem to lie beyond its boundaries.  Many of the tunnel dwellers speak of having been aware of the underground communities before they actually entered it - that people were aware that beneath the surface there were hidden eyes - but she never speaks to members of the above ground population for thoughts on the people that lurk within their city infrastructure.  Furthermore, as a privileged outsider, Toth speaks with people who are, undoubtedly, the most extroverted members of a secretive population.  One individual named J.C. in the text says that a number of the people will only speak with social workers, however, Toth never speaks with social workers about the tunnel dwellers except to source statistics.   Nor does Toth ever discuss the tunnel dwellers as a part of an overall analysis of homelessness in the city.  

The effect created by these lacks is that the tunnel dwellers are almost formed into zoo animals by the text.  They are observed briefly as curiosities, but not entirely taken seriously as meaning anything to the larger social environment.  Perhaps a partial strategy for reporting on an underground population is that a reader may be lead to interpret the tunnel dwellers as mutually distinct from the aboveground population, and not place demands on the text to connect the two realms.  Many of the personal stories of Mole People, told to Toth, describe a desire to leave society.  While those individuals may be sincere in the desires they express, and their social status certainly must change when they move into the tunnels (even if they were socially marginal in the first place), they are still a part of society.

Despite these criticisms, The Mole People is still an interesting text that shines a light onto a marginal population that is beyond the beyond as far as the public’s ability to perceive it is concerned.  I’m aware that Joseph Brennan, a NYC subway enthusiast, has written a lengthy piece on how inaccurate Toth’s descriptions of the underground locations are.  I don’t really think that that is a particularly relevant aspect of her text.  Exact locations of tunnel spots are not important, and what is important about the text is that it describes a group of people’s will to repurpose the subterranean urban infrastructure for the sake of survival and even community.