Quinn Norton Explained

Quinn Norton
Birth Date:[1]
Nationality:American
Children:1
Occupation:Journalist
Essayist

Quinn Norton[2] (born May 1973) is an American journalist and essayist. Her work covers hacker culture, Anonymous, the Occupy movement, intellectual property and copyright issues, and the Internet.

Early life and education

Quinn Norton was born in May 1973. She grew up in a poor family.[3] She was raised between Los Angeles and Phoenix.[4] Her father's struggles with his experience post-Vietnam and his drug-related incarceration[5] inspired her to write later about judicial reform and restorative justice.[6]

Norton completed a GED and attended Orange Coast Community College.[7] She sporadically sat in on classes at University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Santa Barbara but was never formally enrolled.[8]

Career

Norton began her professional life as a technologist when she worked as a systems administrator and web programmer.[9] In 2006, she shifted to journalism. Her focus was initially on technology but eventually grew to encompass internet activism.[10]

In 2006, Norton described a conceptual prank called Quinn's Prank / Quinn's Symphonic Conundrum involving writing and executing a computer program that would output all possible melodies, theoretically providing the opportunity to claim copyright for all music.[11]

Norton's work has appeared in Wired, where she spent a year embedded with Occupy Wall Street.[12] She contributed regularly to the Wired blog, Threat Level, which focused on digital security. From 2013 to 2014, she wrote a column, Notes on a Strange World, at Medium.[13] She wrote articles for Maximum PC magazine for five years and has published in The Guardian, ProPublica, Gizmodo, and O'Reilly Media publications such as Make magazine. She was a long-time participant at O'Reilly's Foo Camp.[14]

Norton has spoken extensively on various aspects of technology, history and culture.[15] [16] [17] From 2006 to 2008, she gave talks at technology conferences about body enhancement, usually under the title "Body Hacking."[18] [19] In connection with this work, Norton taught a course at NYU titled "Laboratory of the Self."[20] As part of her research, Norton had a magnet implanted in the tip of her ring finger, enabling her to sense magnetic fields.[21] [22] The magnet was later removed.

In 2018, The New York Times announced Norton as its new lead opinion writer covering technology.[23] The hire drew sharp criticism focused on tweets Norton wrote between 2013 and 2017, particularly use of slurs referring to gay people and her defense of her friendship with Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker and white supremacist[24] known as weev.[25] [26] Later that day, she and the Times announced she would not join the paper after all;[27] the Times said it had been unaware of her comments.[28] Calling the episode an example of "context collapse", and describing herself as a member of the LGBT community,[29] Norton said her use of slurs had been specific to the context of engaging with the language of hackers.[30] She also said her friendship with Auernheimer (with whom she was no longer in contact) had been an effort to discourage his racism. The incident led to debate over the ethics of free speech in the hacking community at large as well as Times social media policy.

Advocacy

Norton is an advocate of encryption when communicating electronically.[31]

In 2009, she opposed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).[32]

Norton describes herself as an anarchist[33] and a queer activist.

Aaron Swartz

See also: United States v. Swartz. On March 3, 2011, Norton was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury regarding an investigation of her then-partner Aaron Swartz that led to the case United States v. Swartz.[34] She ultimately accepted a proffer agreement with the prosecutor, whereby she shared information about the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto,[35] which defendant Aaron Swartz either wrote or co-wrote. The document offered the prosecution additional evidence in their case against Swartz.[36]

Articles in The Atlantic and in New York Magazine indicate that in 2011 Norton was pressured by prosecutors to offer information or testimony that could be used against Aaron Swartz in his trial for fraud for downloading thousands of academic articles from behind a paywall, but that she denied having information that supported prosecutors' claims of criminal intentions on Swartz's part. Prosecutors nevertheless attempted to use a public blog post on Swartz's blog that Norton mentioned, which may or may not have been co-authored by Swartz, as proof of a criminal intent.[37]

Robert Scoble

In October 2017, Norton wrote a piece about Robert Scoble that described an alleged sexual assault by Scoble on Norton as well as another woman.[38] Scoble denied what turned out to be multiple claims of assault, and said they were the result of his struggle with alcoholism.[39] His response was met with a critical reaction.[40]

Personal life

Norton was married to journalist Danny O'Brien.[41] They have a daughter named Ada. They divorced in 2007.[42]

Norton dated computer programmer and activist Aaron Swartz for roughly three years, from 2007 until early 2011.[43]

In 2016, Norton moved to Luxembourg to live with the man she eventually married in 2017.[44] [45]

Norton identifies as bisexual and polyamorous.[46]

Selected works

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Norton. Quinn. My birthday I next month. I want something OTR-like for Twitter DM.. @quinnnorton. Twitter. en. 11 April 2016.
  2. Web site: United States of America vs. Aaron Swartz, Defendant's Motion to Modify Protection Order. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 15 March 2013.
  3. MacFarquhar. Larissa. The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz. The New Yorker. 4 March 2013. en.
  4. Web site: 2018-02-25 . A Few Things That Are True About Me Quinn Said . 2024-07-11 . en-US.
  5. News: Norton. Quinn. Trigger Warning. The Message. Medium. 4 September 2014.
  6. Web site: A Great Injustice. Quinn. Norton. 25 May 2015.
  7. Web site: Norton. Quinn. A Few Things That Are True About Me. 25 February 2018 . 15 May 2018.
  8. Book: Stark. Kio. Don't Go Back to School: A Handbook for Learning Anything. 2013. Greenglass Books. 978-0-988-94900-3. 23–28. Quinn Norton, Technology journalist. 877875249.
  9. News: Interview with our first Hack.lu 2016 Keynote - Quinn Norton. Hack.lu. 24 June 2016.
  10. Web site: Rashid. Amer. Norton. Quinn. Spotlight: Quinn Norton – DigLibArts. Whittier College. Audio interview. 8 February 2016.
  11. News: Brown. Andrew. A worm's eye view. The Guardian. 21 August 2006. en.
  12. Norton. Quinn. A Eulogy for #Occupy. WIRED. 12 December 2012.
  13. Web site: Notes from a Strange World – A writer's attempt to understand a world being weirded by a network. Medium.
  14. News: Norton. Quinn. Robert Scoble and Me. Quinn Norton. Medium. 19 October 2017.
  15. Web site: Talk: Quinn Norton, December 3, 2015 – DigLibArts. diglibarts.whittier.edu.
  16. "Life in the Invisible City": Quinn Norton talk at GoldsmithsJULY 18, 2016
  17. Web site: Interview with our first Hack.lu 2016 Keynote - Quinn Norton.
  18. News: Regine. Quinn Norton on Body Hacking at 23c3. We Make Money Not Art. 4 January 2007.
  19. News: 2008 Presenters: Quinn Norton. Cusp Conference. 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20120514220448/https://www.cuspconference.com/presenters-2008.php?section=Quinn-Norton#presenters-2008.php?section=Quinn-Norton. 14 May 2012.
  20. Web site: NYU Tisch ITP People: ITP Community: Quinn Norton. Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University.
  21. News: Elliott. Debbie. Norton. Quinn. Wave of the Future: Magnetic Fingers. All Things Considered. 11 June 2006. en. Audio interview.
  22. Norton. Quinn. A Sixth Sense for a Wired World. WIRED. 7 June 2006.
  23. News: Quinn Norton Named to Editorial Board. Bennet. James. 13 February 2018. The New York Times. Kingsbury. Katie. Press release. Dao. Jim.
  24. The NY Times Fires Tech Writer Quinn Norton, and It's Complicated. Rogers. Adams. February 14, 2018. Wired. August 9, 2018.
  25. Web site: Why a Tech Journalist Might Think It's Fine to Be Friends With a Neo-Nazi Troll. Glaser. April. February 14, 2018. Slate. August 9, 2018.
  26. News: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways. Windolf. Jim. 13 February 2018. The New York Times.
  27. Web site: New York Times fires star writer after seven hours over homophobic and racist slurs. Sharman. Jon. 14 February 2018. The Independent. August 9, 2018.
  28. News: The Quinn Norton Debacle Is Far From the Worst Thing the New York Times Has Done Recently. Mirkinson. Jack. 13 February 2018. Splinter News. August 9, 2018.
  29. News: Why Would a Tech Journalist Be Friends With a Neo-Nazi Troll?. Glaser. April. 14 February 2018. Slate.
  30. Web site: The New York Times Fired My Doppelgänger. Norton. Quinn. . 27 February 2018 .
  31. News: Keller. Bill. Schumer. Charles. Horton. Scott. Landay. Jonathan S.. Norton. Quinn. Wimmer. Kurt A.. Wainstein. Kenneth L.. A Conference on the Press, the Government and National Security: Prospects for a Federal Shield Law from Sources and Secrets. The New York Times, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. C-SPAN. 21 March 2014. Video of conference panel.
  32. News: Norton. Quinn. 4/22 CISPA Page. Quinn Said. 12 January 2009.
  33. News: My Plan, and Why You Don't Want it. Norton. Quinn. 2 September 2015. Quinn Norton. Medium.
  34. News: Heymann. Stephen P.. Subpoena to Testify Before a Grand Jury: Quinn Norton. United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 7 April 2011.
  35. Web site: Swartz. Aaron. Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. July 2008.
  36. News: Madrigal. Alexis C.. Editor's Note to Quinn Norton's Account of the Aaron Swartz Investigation. The Atlantic. 3 March 2013.
  37. News: Norton. Quinn. Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation. The Atlantic. 3 March 2013.
  38. News: Quinn Norton on sexual assault, community response, and restorative justice / Boing Boing. Boing Boing. 20 October 2017.
  39. News: Scoble. Robert. No, of that I'm innocent. Robert Scoble's Augment Your Life. 25 October 2017. 14 February 2018. 10 February 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190210065844/https://scobleizer.blog/2017/10/25/no-of-that-im-innocent-sexual-harassment-assault-accusations/. dead.
  40. News: Glaser. April. Scoble Isn't Sorry. Slate. 25 October 2017.
  41. News: Yang. Wesley. The Life and Afterlife of Aaron Swartz. New York. 8 February 2013.
  42. News: Norton. Quinn. My Aaron Swartz, whom I loved. Quinn Said. 12 January 2013.
  43. Book: Peters. Justin. The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet. 2017. Scribner. New York. 978-1-476-76774-1. 944380312.
  44. News: Norton. Quinn. Even More Personal News. Quinn Norton. Patreon. 13 February 2018. en.
  45. Web site: Norton. Quinn. I know it's mostly not cool to be a fan of 2016, but I wanted to let you all know it's not all bad: against all odds, I'm getting married.. @quinnnorton. Twitter. en. 22 November 2016.
  46. Web site: Norton . Quinn . Police Uniforms Don't Belong at Pride. . . October 30, 2023 . May 19, 2021 . I’m a passing queer — bisexual, polyamourus, weakly gendered female, and white..
  47. News: Weatherford. Ashley.
    1. BlackGirlsAreMagic. Sorry If You Don't Agree.
    . The Cut. New York. 19 November 2015. en.

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