LitReview: Hacking Politics

Who?

According to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Politics-Progressives-Anarchists-Internet-ebook/dp/B00DYFGYJO

Author: David Moon

But also very important are:

Editors: Patrick Ruffini, David Segal

and 

Aaron Swartz, Lauren Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Zoe Lofgren, Jamie Laurie, Ron Paul, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Tiffiniy Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, Nicole Powers, Josh Levy, Andrew Mcdiarmid and David Sohn, Ernesto Falcon, Derek Slater, Casey Rae-Hunter, Elizabeth Stark, and if you really want the full list you can read it here: https://hfoss-fossrit.rhcloud.com/static/books/hackingpolitics_txtwithcvfb.pdf

What?

Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists, and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet

Where?

https://hfoss-fossrit.rhcloud.com/static/books/hackingpolitics_txtwithcvfb.pdf

When?

July 15, 2013

The Gist

Basically it's a ton of quotes/stories/arguments made by relevant people speaking about their involvement or knowledge of the big fight for the internet, specifically the fight against the SOPA and PIPA bills.

The Good

-They were able to gather the best people to talk about the topic.  It was great to hear about the political battling for the internet from the people who were really involved and knew the most about what was going on.

-The style that this was written in was great - I liked how the entire thing was just a giant collection of pieces written by the long list of people involved in the "Hacking Politics".

-This is an important topic and is well documented in this book.  The world is incredibly dependent today on the internet, and so it is very important to remember and learn about milestones in the internet's history like this.

The Bad

-Lots of words especially referencing things that I don't know much about.  One of the first pages is a list of important political things that are referenced throughout, and I neither knew about, nor cared about much of those things.

-It was a lot to take in - even as a TLDR version.  I can't see anyone reading the actual full book unless they are studying this for a class, or if they're being punished.

-All over the place.  Obviously the giant strands of quotes is not always connected, but I don't just mean that.  Even the more connected pieces go all over the place, which I think is purely because there is so much information.

Questions?

-I found it very interesting how this battle was fought.  It makes sense that an internet battle would be fought in this way, but are there other types of battles where people could come together in a similar fashion like this?

-How can we completely prevent things like SOPA or PIPA from resurfacing again in any shape or form, and how likely is it that these things will keep surfacing?

-This book is about 2 years old now - is there any significant news that is highly related to this book to be mentioned?

My Review

I remember the internet blackout, I remember the SOPA stuff, but I didn't really care much for it, and I felt like it would obviously work itself out.  Due to these feelings, I found this read quite interesting because I never knew all of these details about what specifically happened in this battle.  I liked reading about this topic from the first hand quotes and the background information.  I just wish it was shorter.

7/10