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Anthropologist Gabriella Coleman (author of the brilliant Coding Freedom) spent years embedded with Anonymous and has written an indispensable account of the Anonymous phenomenon.

I’m going to join Biella for a live appearance at Foyles Books in central London on Tuesday night at 7PM, in an event moderated by James Bridle. Tickets are £5 , and there are still some left.

There is no better way to understand Anonymous than through an anthropological lens, because the most significant thing about them is not the politics and not the hacking, but the way they are (and are not) organized in their campaigns of “ultracoordinated motherfuckery.” Coleman’s book is a perfect mix of scholarly and narrative, with all the excitement of traitors and dawn police raids combined with a sensitive and nuanced understanding of the Anonymous phenomenon.

Hackers and Hoaxers: Inside Anonymous