Writing on technology, culture, and politics; dissertating on the politics of disruption in networked communication technologies.
SELECTED ESSAYS
Instant Recall, Real Life Mag, June 2017
The Apophenic Machine, Real Life Mag, May 2017
Persuasion and the other thing: a critique of big data methodologies in politics, Ethnography Matters, May 2017
The Illicit Aura of Information, limn, February 2017
When is a Hack an Act of War? VICE Motherboard, July 2016
Here Is What Real Online Civil Disobedience Looks Like, iO9, November 2014
Online Activism and Why the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Must Die, BoingBoing, October 2014
The Future of Civil Disobedience Online, iO9, June 2013
If Hackers Didn’t Exist, Governments Would Have to Invent Them, The Atlantic, July 2012
Guy Fawkes Mask-ology, HiLobrow, April 2012
The Visual Life of Occupy Wall Street, In Media Res, February 2012
SELECTED ACADEMIC ARTICLES + BOOK CHAPTERS
Kevin Mitnick, The New York Times, and the Media’s Conception of the Hacker, Making Our World: Hacker and Maker Movements in Context, editors Andrew Schrock and Jeremy Hunsinger, Peter Lang (forthcoming)
Activist DDoS, Community, and the Personal, Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice, editors Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, June 2016
Show Me on the Map Where They Hacked You: Cyberwar and the Geospatial Internet Doctrine, Case Western Journal of International Law (2015)
‘LOIC Will Tear Us Apart’: The Impact of Tool Design and Media Portrayals in the Success of Activist DDOS Attacks, American Behavioral Scientist, March 2013
SELECTED BOOK REVIEWS
When WWW Trumps IRL: Why it’s now impossible to pretend the internet is somehow less real, The National Post, July 2017
Are We For Sale? Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants Explores the Price We Pay for Content, The National Post, October 2016
Algorithm Is Gonna Get You: Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction Explores How We’re Trapped By Big Data, The National Post, October 2016
How Do We Make America Great? ‘Necessary Trouble’ and ‘Against Democracy’ Take Contrasting Views, Los Angeles Times, September 2016
Gretchen Bakke’s The Grid Illustrates the Right Way to Fix What’s Wrong with the Future of Energy, The National Post, July 2016
Death by Video Game: What is it About Video Games That Inspires Such Intense Engagement? The National Post, June 2016
In Televangelist of Technology Kevin Kelly’s Divinely-Guided, The Inevitable, The Future Isn’t Quite For Everyone, The National Post, June 2016
Terrorism in Cyberspace Book Review, Journal of Communication, December 2015
MEDIA INTERVIEWS
My research has been featured in Popular Mechanics, Boing Boing, the BBC, and Der Speigel, and I’m a frequent expert commentator on issues of cyber security, hacking, digital activism, and technology.
“How hacktivism intersects with law,” Marketplace, American Public Media, 28 April 2017
“DDoS attack against whitehouse.gov eyed as a valid protest,” ComputerWorld, 17 January 2017
“Popcorn Time/New Ransomware,” As It Happens, CBC, 15 December 2016
“Canadians not terribly savvy about digital privacy, poll finds,” CBC News, 30 November 2016
“Mirai/Internet attack,” As It Happens, CBC, 21 October 2016
“Tape over your laptop camera? Why it might not be as paranoid as it seems,” CBC News, 24 June 2016
“The Age of Robin Hood Hackers,” The National, CBC, 10 April 2016
“When Hackers Make Headlines,” The National Sunday Talk, CBC, 26 August 2015
“How ISIS uses the tools of activism for its own violent goals,” The World, PRI, 16 March 2015
“Which Cyber Hacks Should We Worry About,” Science Friday, PRI, 16 January 2015
“Lizard Squad goes after Twitch. Cyber criminals or just Internet Trolls?,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 August, 2014
“The fight to make DDoS attacks a legitimate form of protest,” The Daily Dot, 19 June 2014
“Civil disobedience comes online,” Marketplace, American Public Media, 24 June 2013
“CyberBunker: Hacking as Performance Art,” BusinessWeek, 4 April 2013
“The Pirate Bay and DDOS Actions,” Outriders, BBC5, 29 January 2013
“So geht ziviler Ungehorsam im Internet,” Der Spiegel, 28 December 2012
“Crowds,” The Digital Human, 4 June 2012
“doing it for the LULZ,” Too Much Information, WFMU, 9 April 2012
“SXSW: The hacker you think you know doesn’t exist,” Popular Mechanics, 16 March 2012
“LulzSec hackers take a dive on account of a stoolie,” Marketplace, American Public Media, 7 March 2012
“Four signs ‘hacktivism’ has gone mainstream,” CBC News, 7 February 2012
“Hacktivism,” Click On, BBC4, 31 October 2011
“Impulsan en EU ‘apagón estratégico’ de internet,” Reforma, 6 March 2011
“Hackers’ attacks alarm the Web,” The Boston Globe, 10 December 2010
“Cerco a WikiLeaks leva a temor de censura,” Folha de S. Paolo, 14 December 2010
REVIEWS AND PRESS FOR THE COMING SWARM
Excerpts of The Coming Swarm have been featured on BoingBoing and io9
One of Science Friday’s Best Science Books of 2014
One of io9’s Best Science Books of 2014
One of the EFF’s “Must-Reads” of 2014
“…a strong and timely reminder of a nearly forgotten history of Internet radicalism and a reclamation of DDoS as a legitimate tool for civil disobedience.” Guobin Yang, Contemporary Sociology, American Sociological Association, Vol 45, Issue 2, 2016
“…provide[s] [a] thorough analysis of activism in the age of new media and offer[s] a critical appraisal of digitally mediated potentials for progress and democracy…” Mariam Betlemidze, New Media and Society, Vol 18, Issue 5, 2016
“…a valuable source for researchers, activists and even policymakers, and it should find specifically a home on the shelves of social movement and collective action scholars.” Leonie Maria Tanczer, London School of Economics and Political Science Review of Books, May 2015
“…[The Coming Swarm] is an excellent source on the history of the tactic.” – Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society, December 2014
“…a thought-provoking little bomb of a book that raises issues activists in 2014 can’t afford to ignore…” – Astra Taylor, Salon, December 2014
“…essential for those who are interested in the future of activism and the role that the internet might play in it…” Sofia Romualdo, The Curious Curator August 2014
“The History of DDoS Attacks as a Tool of Protest,” Joseph Cox, Vice Motherboard, October 2014
“DDoS Attacks: Legitimate Form of Protest or Criminal Act?” Sophia Stuart, PCMag, October 2014
“Legalise online protests to safeguard democracy,” Christopher Baraniuk, The New Scientist, October 2014
“Molly Sauter’s quest to make political DDoS legitimate,” Joe Urchill, The Christian Science Monitor, December 2014