Hacking has always been political. This is why we went to the 38c3, the 38th annual congress of the Chaos Communication Club, in Hamburg. It is the largest hacker congress in the world, with 15,000 people joining the event over four days and with no corporate sponsoring and all volunteer work. Wow. What did we learn there? First, bringing together the technical tech and the digital policy crowd is not fully straightforward, but extremely productive. Second, talking about structural flaws in technology is still challenging, and it is even more challenging to talk about ways of addressing them effectively. Third, there is an increasing appetite for intervening and hacking in non-traditional ways – including strategic litigation, risk-aware activism and sabotage.
There is an increasing appetite for intervening and hacking in non-traditional ways – including strategic litigation, risk-aware activism and sabotage.
Malte and Sandra Sieron tackled the question of „AI after capitalism? Is there use for ChatGPT in the better new world?“. Their answer was a rather clear “Probably not, but …”. As Malte put it: „[t]here is no ai, only other people‘s work. And these people usually aren‘t white.“ It will not come as a surprise to you that “AI” is currently not held accountable, let alone controlled in a democratic way, but only by single powerful individuals at the top of corporations. Generative “AI” like ChatGPT is an intrinsically conservative technology as it can only ever reproduce the patterns of the past and is doomed to reproduce the status quo. If we want to build a postcapitalist future, we have to ask ourselves if technologies can assist us in building a society of equality, emancipation and democratic participation. Modern tools like pattern recognition and machine learning might be helpful in the context of democratic economic planning, but those would look different from the AI tools that are currently being hyped. If you want to know more, watch the talk here.
Rather unexpectedly, I had the honour of opening and closing the 38c3 together with Gabriela Bogk and with background support by Felix Reda. In the opening, we set the scene by highlighting that the threat of fascism is becoming increasingly real. Hence, organising and resisting is becoming more important, and there are great examples in the hacker community of how to do this. Many examples date back to the early days of the Chaos Computer Club, but we should also draw attention to what is possible these days: Sci-Hub opens up research papers that are otherwise closed behind the paywalls of academic publishers and the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual provides many ideas for how to slow down and sabotage fascists in control. In the closing, we put a spotlight on the many ways of resisting that were part of the 38c3 programme like undermining the payment cards given to refugees to control where and how they can spend money, and a follow-up to the investigative report on a far-right meeting in Germany that had triggered huge protests across the country.
It was great to observe so many different communities united at the 38c3, and to get inspiration for what it means to take action in manifold ways. Thank you to everyone who was part of making that happen!