Hacking in the Humanities: Cybersecurity, Speculative Fiction, and Navigating a Digital Future

by Aaron Mauro, Anthony Mandal, Jenny Kidd

Length: 224 pages
Edition: 1
Language: English
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date: 2022-06-02
ISBN-10: 1350230987
ISBN-13: 9781350230989
Sales Rank: #0 (See Top 100 Books)

What would it take to hack a human? How exploitable are we? In the cybersecurity industry, professionals know that the weakest component of any system sits between the chair and the keyboard. This book looks to speculative fiction, cyberpunk and the digital humanities to bring a human – and humanistic – perspective to the issue of cybersecurity. It argues that through these stories we are able to predict the future political, cultural, and social realities emerging from technological change.

Making the case for a security-minded humanities education, this book examines pressing issues of data security, privacy, social engineering and more, illustrating how the humanities offer the critical, technical, and ethical insights needed to oppose the normalization of surveillance, disinformation, and coercion.

Within this counter-cultural approach to technology, this book offers a model of activism to intervene and meaningfully resist government and corporate oversight online. In doing so, it argues for a wider notion of literacy, which includes the ability to write and fight the computer code that shapes our lives.

Cover
Halftitle Page
Title Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Human Exploits: An Introduction to Hacking and the Humanities
    The Darkest Timeline
    Don’t Be Evil
    Claiming the Future
    A Mischievous Spirit
1 “Hack the Planet”: Pop Hackers and the Demands of a Real World Resistance
    Parler Tricks
    Anthological Freedom
    Street-Level Anarchy
    Polymorphic Protest Culture
2 Academic Attack Surfaces: Culture Jamming the Future and XML Bombs
    Prescient Pessimism
    A Jussive Mood
    sudo rm -rf /
    A Billion Laughs
3 Supply Chain Attacks and Knowledge Networks: Network Sovereignty and the Interplanetary Internet
    A Consensual Hallucination
    El Paquete
    Sovereign Networks
    Don’t Worry, We’re from the Internet
4 Cryptographic Agility and the Right to Privacy: Secret Writing and the Cypherpunks
    Tales from the Crypt
    The Enemy Knows the System
    Happy Birthday
    Ignoti et quasi occulti
5 Biohacking and the Autonomous Androids: Human Evolution and Biometric Data
    Vital Machines
    The Selfish Ledger
    Virtual Influencers
    Cindy Mayweather—ArchAndroid
6 Gray Hat Humanities: Surveillance Capitalism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Design Fiction
Selected Bibliography
Index
Imprint