Trained as an anthropologist, he teaches and researches the history, politics and culture of information technology. He is the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008), which is a history and ethnography of free and open source software production (http://twobits.net). He has also written about the nature of information sharing in science (in genetics and in nanotechnology), and has been deeply involved in the fight for expanding open access to scholarly publications. His current projects include a large-scale NSF-funded comparative study of forms of participation, ethnographic research on book piracy and its policing, and a scholarly magazine called Limn (http://limn.it). He holds no patents, but he loves reading old ones.