The Anthropology of Hackers (2010)

If you read this and want more like it, the author of the article (Gabriella Coleman) wrote an excellent ethnography on the culture around hackers and free software, which is also available through her site: http://gabriellacoleman.org/Coleman-Coding-Freedom.pdf

The timing might be a little confusing; my understanding is that the book was born out of her dissertation written before 2010, predating the article in the Atlantic, but this book was published after the Atlantic article came out (so it may be even more refined than the article, and certainly more in-depth).

It's longer (on the order of ~250 pages), but it's really great, and one of my favorite examples of Anthropology investigating and thinking about technology and the people that live and breathe it.

I grew up after the open source revolution of the 80's and 90's, but my parents did not get internet until I was in high school. At one point though, I read "How To Be A Hacker" and tried to emulate that world when I started to learn programming. I fell out of love with as I grew up, but there's still a bit of nostalgia for that world to me(false nostalgia - I was never part of it).

I chronicled my journey and why I stopped liking it: http://www.ahalbert.com/technology/2013/04/02/hackerpolitics...

I hate the word hacker. It's completely meaningless today anyway.