Free Culture and the City
Hackers, Commoners, and Neighbors in Madrid, 1997–2017
Alberto Corsin Jimenez author Adolfo Estalella author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cornell University Press
Published:15th Feb '23
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£108.00(9781501767173)
Free Culture and the City examines how and why free software spread beyond the world of hackers and software engineers and became the basis for an urban movement now heralded by scholars as a model for emulation.
By the late 1990s, digital activists embraced a philosophy of free software and "free culture" in order to take control over their cities and everyday lives. Free culture, previously tethered to the digital realm, was cut loose and used to reclaim and resculpt the city. In Madrid the effects were dramatic. Common sights in the city were abandoned as industrial factories turned into autonomous social centers, urban orchards, guerrilla architectural camps, or community hacklabs.
Drawing on two decades of ethnographic and historical work with free culture collectives in Madrid, Free Culture and the City shows how, in its journey from the digital to the urban, the practice of liberating culture required the mobilization of, and alliances between, public art centers, neighborhood associations, squatted social centers, hackers, intellectual property lawyers, street artists, guerrilla architectural collectives, and Occupy assemblies.
ISBN: 9781501767180
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 21mm
Weight: 454g
288 pages