<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

The Anonymous ghost in the machine

A review of Hacker, Hoaxer Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriella Coleman penetrates the chaotic world of the mysterious non- collective that hacked the Pentagon and the government of Tunisia for starters

22 November 2014

9:00 AM

22 November 2014

9:00 AM

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous Gabriella Coleman

Verso, pp.452, £16.99, ISBN: 9781781685839

Why would you send an anthropologist — as this book’s author, Gabriella Coleman, is — to study Anonymous, the indescribable hacktivist phenomenon whose operations (‘ops’) and giddy, menacing, profane video-manifestos have seized the media and the public consciousness from 2006 to the present day? Because Anonymous is, above all, an anthropological phenomenon.

Already a subscriber? Log in

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £14.99 Tel: 08430 600033. Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, activist and science-fiction writer.

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close