Programmers, Hackers and Hacks: the people and practices behind our machines

This is a podcast series that will hopefully help you learn about the role of hackers, computer programmers, data scientists all all sorts of nerds and magicians who help build our digital societies today. I am your host Paula Bialski, and I am Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen and an affiliate researcher at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University in Luneburg Germany. I am ethnographer of digital cultures, which just means that I like befriending all sorts of technically-savvy nerds, which I’ve done in my research stints in the past. This podcast was originally created for my Contextual Studies course at St. Gallen University in April 2020. A lot what I will be talking to you throughout this podcast lecture will come from my own two year research project where I hung out among corporate programmers in Berlin who made mapping and navigation software. This podcast is written and read by Paula Bialski. Production, sound editing, and sound design was done by Heights Beats. Thank you in particular to Chris Kelty and Biella Coleman and our endeavour at hackcur.io for inspiring this podcast, as well as the Leuphana University Luneburg and the University of St. Gallen.