Brendan McCollam – Without A Traceroute

Brendan McCollam [http://www.withoutatraceroute.com/] is a 2008-2009 Watson Fellow [www.watsonfellowship.org]. Here are my notes at his Haip 2008, lecture – Without A Traceroute – Traveling the world hanging out with hackers

What is the Watson Fellowship?

Basically, you make up some crazy project that you’re really interested in, and they give you $28,000 to do it.

Examples of Watson projects:

• Spanish sports slang in South America
• Evolution of outrigger canoes in Polynesia
• The effect of four ant species’ behavior
• The culture of ultimate frisbee

Cool physical hacking places he visited:

• PUSCII, Utrecht, Netherlands – http://puscii.squat.net
• EU Data Retention Conference, Budapest
• Italian Hackmeeting, Palermo, Italiy – Ask 191
• http://noblogs.org/ – blog hosting provider for lots of activist blogs in Italy
• C-Base, Berlin, Germany
• Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The types of people he met

Pure/’true’ hackers:

• Concerned with technology for its own sake
• Generally less-political
• Intuitive understand of “hack value” without the need for application

Tech Activists:

• “That’s great, but how does this bring about the revolution?”
• Generally way more paranoid and harder to get in touch with
• Tend to be narrowly focused: security, communication, organization

Artists:

• Also concerned with application of technology
• Generally the easiest group to get in touch with
• Usually are trying to say something, to communicate an idea

Future

Something along the lines of Croatia, Poland, France, back to Berlin, then Argentina, Chile, Mexico and maybe Brazil.

He’s looking for ideas for his future travels, so get in touch via his blog – http://www.withoutatraceroute.com/