Hackathons and the spirit of digital capitalism

Since the last twenty years, hackathons have spread from a technologically focused event into different social domains. It is a collaborative, yet competitive event format in which several teams work in a limited amount of time to find solutions to "challenges" posed by the host companies, institutions or organisations. Besides the original technology-centred format in which people "hack" in order to work on problems in computer and software programming, the format has diffused in entrepreneurial and civic contexts.

 The talk will concentrate on theme-centred hackathons that deal with far-reaching societal problems such as climate change or the ongoing Corona pandemic. I will situate the case of hackathons in debates around the innovation complex and the creativity dispositif, the new spirit of (digital) capitalism and the Californian ideology.