That hackers are created, not born, is hardly a new claim. In Coding Freedom Gabriella Coleman described how an open-source hackers’ identity emerged from a fervent brew of digital connectivity, technological concepts, and shared work (Coleman, 2012). Political awareness was connected to liberalism through open-source and code over time. Put simply, being a hacker is a trajectory with multiple points of origin and destinations. Neither is suggesting that hackers are ordinary meant to discard a concern with exceptional hackers. We should be concerned with the Chelsea Mannings and Edward Snowdens of the world, and the causes they have championed.
Can the data activism be a connection between the concerns of the ordinary and the extraordinay hacker? The Data Week experience seems to support this claim, as a frequent activity in our common hackerspace, that invites a diverse group of people but put activist concerns as a explicit topic, instead of the neutralized "hello world" introduction to technology.
