From the Journal of Peer Production:
...hardware development and biological science are just about to be infused with the same kind of contestations and contradictions that characterize software hacking. This is due to the fact that hackers are not simply engaged in hands-on approaches to technology. Those practices are at one and the same time a means of doing politics. They are geared towards the development of concepts that lay at the very core of our societies, such as openness, property, freedom and autonomy (Coleman and Golub 2008; Kelty 2008; Söderberg and Daoud, 2012). It is also for this very reason that studies of hacker culture and practices, such as the ones offered here, are indispensable when trying to make sense of the evolution of science and technology in the ‘information society’ at large.More here
