David, A lot of folks have answered, I think well, to some of your queries so I don't have much to add but here are a few additional thoughts: Free software does belong to a lineage of people who thought/think of themselves as hackers and Richard Stallman was motivated to write free software to save the ethics of hacking, using that very language. I know you know this, so I am still puzzled by the resistance, if nothing else, to acknowledge that hacker/hacking are terms used by thousands upon thousands of free software developers to conceptualize their craft and their ethics. Whether Free software had brought a radical political transformation in the world is easy to answer: "no." It has shifted and I would say in some important ways, the politics of IP law (among some other arenas). That has been one of its most important contributions and many developers--outside of the radical techie free software developer community--would not claim to be doing anything but writing free software. Many others have tagged a more Utopian language/understanding onto them (perhaps because they give a powerful glimpse into the importance of unalienated labor and more problematically because of the problematic idea that computers will save the world). But many of these hackers are just into their craft, have built some extremely interesting social institutions to produce software, and I am not sure why we need to be primarily or only judging them for being (or not) radical political activists out to save the world. I understand that one might want to and should pop the Utopian hype enveloping dominant understanding of computers, but not at the expense of misrepresenting some of these worlds and criticizing every last shred/byte of computer-related activity. As someone who has spent way too much time on/with Anonymous: there are clearly hackers and sys admins involved but there are a great many who are geeky types with enough digital literacies to get involved in these worlds and yet who neither self-identify as such nor have the requisite skills. Again I don't see why you are so keen in sticking them Anonymous in such limited box. As per a special issue on Stuxtnet, I think the problem is not a lack of desire but those worlds are incredibly, almost impossibly hard to study for anyone and even harder for academics. Imagine trying to get IRB approval for studying the Russian Business Network or the Stuxtnet writers? We will have to rely on journalists and there is some good work being done (King Pin by Poulsen, a hacker or at least ex-hacker himself). There has also been very good work done on cyberconflict by Athina Karatzogianni (http://works.bepress.com/athina_karatzogianni/4/) and finally some empirical work being done on nationalistic hacking, such as this book on Chinese hackers (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-dark-visitor-%28paperback%29/17784...). Biella -- Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor NYU, Department of Media, Culture, & Communication On Leave 2010-2011, The Institute for Advanced Study http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Gabriella_Coleman