Demoscene bibliography

Arrasvuori, Juha (1999): Tietokone soittimena - 'digitaalisen musiikin' lähtökohtia. Teoksessa Järvinen, Aki & Mäyrä, Franz (toim.): Johdatus digitaaliseen kulttuuriin. Tampere: Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu (Tampere Polytechnic) & Osuuskunta Vastapaino. BibTeX

Computer as Instrument - Starting Points for Digital Music. An introduction to digital music that briefly discusses tracker software in a footnote (see p. 203).

Aune, Margrethe (1996): The computer in everyday life. Patterns of domestication of a new technology. In Lie, Merete & Sørensen, Knut (eds.): Making Technology Our Own: Domesticating Technology into Everyday Life. Scandinavian University Press.BibTeX

An article dealing with the domestication of new technology (as the name suggests).

Borsook, Paulina (2000): Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech. New York: Public Affairs.BibTeX

A critical study about the social impacts of technology. The actual subject of this book are the techno-libertarians of USA, but maybe there's some anarcho-capitalism, social Darwinistic metaphors and excitement about the Hobbesian war of all against all to be found in the demoscene as well? See more details in http://www.cyberselfish.com.

Dimmen, Pål (2003): Datamaskinell Piratvirksomhet: Fra Altair Basic til Kazaa. Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen (University of Bergen).BibTeX

A master's thesis that deals with the history of piracy and the cracking scene (which is closely related to demo culture history). Available only in Norwegian for now.

Hoikkala, Tommi (1989): Nuorisokulttuurista kulttuuriseen nuoruuteen. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.BibTeX

From Youth Culture to Cultural Youth. Tommi Hoikkala is a fan and youth culture researcher, who doesn't talk about computer enthousiasts at all, but as Saarikoski (2001a) points out, Hoikkala's observations are still well applicatory to the demoscene. The youth fan cultures are described as promoting their own practices and values as well as possessing a strong social sense of belonging together. Even more similarly, it is typical of a fan culture to harness creativity by making their own artwork. For more on demoscene as a subculture, see Saarikoski (2001a, 60-64).

Kangas, Sonja & Kuure, Tapio (eds.) (2003): Teknologisoituva nuoruus. Nuorisotutkimusverkosto/Nuorisotutkimusseura.BibTeX

The Technologising Youth offers to draw a holistic picture of youth and new technology, which any researcher should address to place demoscene in it's context. As a welcome insight, the book also introduces some empirical studies on the subjects. The abstract mentions new forms of participation and learning due to technology, which may well describe the demoscene. See http://www.nuorisotutkimusseura.fi/index.php?osio=julkaisut&sisalto=teknologia for the whole description.

Moschitto, Denis & Sen, Evrim (2000): Hackertales. Geschichten von Freund + Feind. Germany: Tropen Verlag.BibTeX

Hackertales - Tales about Friends + Enemies. A fictious book about a German phreaker. The authors are demosceners who have worked for groups such as Scoopex and Shining-8. Written in German. A description is available online at http://www.hackerland.de/ .

Moschitto, Denis & Sen, Evrim (2001): Hackerland. Das Logbuch der Szene. Germany: Tropen Verlag. Third revised edition.BibTeX

Hackerland - the Logbook of the Scene. An introductory book to software piracy, phreakers and hacker culture. Scenes formed around illegal activities take a main role in the book, but there also are bits about demoscene and -parties (see pp. 110-120). The authors are demosceners who have worked for groups such as Scoopex and Shining-8. Written in German. A description is available online at http://www.hackerland.de/ .

Nissen, Jörgen (1993): Pojkarna Vid Datorn: Unga Entusiaster i Datateknikens Värld. Stockholm: Symposium Graduale.BibTeX

Boys in front of computers, the young enthousiasts in the world of information technology. A sociological PhD thesis on the young Swedish computer users. We haven't found this one yet.

Nordli, Hege (1998): Fra Spice Girls til Cyber Girls. En kvalitativ analyse av datafascinerte jenter i ungdomsskolen. STS-report 35, Centre for Technology and Society, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. BibTeX

A research article written in Norwegian. Describes the attitudes of young computer enthousiast girls. Was later published in English as well (see below).

Nordli, Hege (2001): From 'Spice Girls' to Cybergirls: The Role of Multimedia in the Construction of Young Girls' Fascination for and Interest in Computers. In van Lieshout, Marc; Egyedi, Tineke; Bijker, Wiebe (eds.): Social Learning Technologies. The introduction of multimedia in education. Ashgate Publishing, pp. 110-133. BibTeX

The results of a research concerning the attitudes of young computer enthousiast girls ranging from 14 to 16 years of age. Discussion is provided on the gender roles as well as the importance of multimedia in education. An interesting finding is that not even the most enthousiastic girls want to be associated with nerds because of image reasons. Another interesting point is that big brothers tend to occupy the family computer which in turn leads to loss of interest. The study is a part of a larger trend: the Norwegian authorities were worried about the small number of women studying computer science or working in the computer industry. A bit different version of the study is available online .

Rehn, Alf (2004): The politics of contraband - The honor economies of the warez scene. Journal of Socio-Economics 33, pp. 359-374.BibTeX

An article that describes a system of modern gift economy in the warez scene. Rehn (2004, 366) writes about reputation tournaments and status maintaining that sound very familiar to a demoscener. The competitive producing is coined (Rehn 2004, 368) as institutional egoism, a term that may fit the demoscene as well. There are also interesting bits on how Rehn conducted the participatory ethnography for the research. You should however be reminded that the demoscene and warez scene are not the same thing: demoscene is for one not an inherently illegal, or in the eyes of the software industry and many others, immoral subculture (cf. Rehn 2004, 365). Indeed, the artifacts produced by the demoscene differ so vastly from the warez scene ones that a separate social analysis is necessary. The article is available online at http://www.alfrehn.com/Texts/Rehn%20-%20The%20politics%20of%20contraband%20copy.pdf.