Quinn Norton continues her excellent history of Anonymous for Wired, this time visiting the shift in the movement from pure transgression to political activism, and the way that this played out among Anons themselves:
Anonymous fundamentally produces two things: spectacle and infrastructure hacking. They create scenes the media often can’t resist, but they also tend to be ones that the media isn’t very good at understanding. The rest of the time they create or destroy online infrastructure, much of which never directly gets noticed. Op Payback & Assange combined the two, but were mainly spectacle. None of the attacks disrupted the function of the targeted entities for long, if at all, but that was missed by much of the media, who instead confused people into believing that they wouldn’t be able to use their Visa or MasterCards to buy gas or groceries, thanks to Anonymous.
Anonymous 101 Part Deux: Morals Triumph Over Lulz