ehippies
the free range electrohippies project

Put simply, the Free Range electrohippie collective is an initiative to develop tools and learning for grassroots activists to use electronic networks and communications technologies to extend their capabilities from the 'real' to the 'virtual' world.

Quick links:

• electrohippies publications – new information and publications produced by the electrohippie collective.
• The electrohippies publications archive – a collection of the electrohippies older publications (pre-2005).
• electrohippies actions index – information about on-line actions by the electrohippie collective and other groups.

Hacking + Actvism = "Hacktivism"

The Earth's ecosystem is in serious peril – and we need to raise awareness of the major limitations on our future development, such as peak oil, which the general public is not currently aware of.

"Public relations", since its inception by Edward Bernays in the 1920s, has become a powerful, global, multimedia spectacle that holds the public entraced, and which must continue to portray Consumerism as the only possible system of organisation for humanity; is clearly isn't the only option, but to get that message across we have to manipulate and reconstitute the tools of the mass media that public relations uses. Social and community activism must therefore engage the technological machine that services modern society, turning it's processes against itself and the technological hegemony in order to show how tenuous the future existence of modern society has become.

As with other Free Range projects, the purpose of the electrohippies is to develop resources for activists and campaigners to pick up and customise to their own needs – albeit in this case it's rather controversial as it involves manipulating electronic networks which today can be considered to be terrorism (it's a very large grey area in the law as a result of the drafting of The Terrorism Act 2000). The problem is that, because of the drafting of present anti-terrorism laws, and the restrictions on our civil rights imposed since 2000 (Britain was doing this many months before 11–9!), it's a legal grey area that the media and security services can exploit to intimidate and manginalise dissenters.

Hacktivism as a movement or tool is not illegal – and if, like the non-violent direct action movement, we keep hacktivism as a tool for open and focussed action against injustice and human subjugation then such activities should not become unlawful. Fundamentally, hacktivism is all about creativity; it's about taking a given piece of technology and envisioning a use for it beyond that which it was designed for – and with a clear social or political context to its use. From the DIY sound systems of the inner cities, to off-grid low impact engineers, to the global network of activists seeking to change the way the world works, hacktivism is a creative skill that the progressive movements need to master.