Academic & Scholarly Publications on Autistici/Inventati (A/I)

Compiled: September 2026 Subject: Autistici/Inventati (A/I) — Italian hacktivist collective active 2001–2026. Founded in 2001 from the Milanese hacker collective LOA (the “autistici”) and the Florentine citizen-journalists of CPA/Inventati (the “sgamati”), A/I provided free email, mailing lists, web hosting, videoconferencing and the NoBlogs publishing platform for left-wing, anti-fascist and anti-globalisation movements. It supported Indymedia Italia during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, was wiretapped by the Italian Postal Police in 2004 (leading to the “Plan R*” distributed-server architecture), was studied in hacker-history and digital-activism scholarship, and shut down in September 2026 after the US government designated it a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT) in August 2026.

This file collects academic and scholarly publications (books, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, and academic journal essays) that discuss Autistici/Inventati, with notes on what each source covers.

1. Books (academic monographs & university-press volumes)

1.1 Autistici/Inventati (the collective’s own history — primary source)

• Autistici & Inventati, +Kaos. 10 anni di hacking e mediattivismo [Ten years of hacking and mediactivism], ed. Laura Beritelli. Milan: Agenzia X, 2012. 288 pp. ISBN 978-88-95029-62-7. License CC BY-SA-NC.
  • Free PDF: https://www.agenziax.it/sites/default/files/free-download/kaos.pdf
  • The collective’s self-account of its first decade (LOA origins, Sgamati/Inventati, Genoa 2001, the 2004 police wiretapping, the Kaos Tour, Plan R*, NoBlogs). Widely cited by the academic literature below.
• Autistici/Inventati, +KAOS: Ten Years of Hacking and Media Activism. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2017. ISBN 978-94-92302-16-8. DOI: 10.25969/mediarep/19242.
  • English edition of the 2012 book, published by the academic research institute Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam). Free PDF: https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/kaos.pdf
  • Cited e.g. in Ritimo, Technological Sovereignty, Vol. 2 (2018) and in the Institute of Network Cultures conference volume Archiving Activism in the Digital Age (2024).

1.2 University-press monographs

• Renzi, Alessandra, Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. 280 pp. ISBN 978-1-5179-0326-8. Open-access: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/hacked-transmissions
  • Book on Italian connective activism; the chapter “Activist Energetics in the Information Milieu” (pp. 24–…) discusses A/I among the “tech collectives” that “have been performing the work of caring for the political, cultural, and affective networks of communication of movements for decades.”
• Sorci, Giuliana, Server ribelli. R-esistenza digitale e hacktivismo nel fediverso in Italia [Rebel servers: digital r-esistance and hacktivism in the fediverse in Italy]. Milan: Meltemi, 2025. 282 pp. ISBN 979-12-5615-312-1.
  • Academic monograph tracing Italian digital resistance from the early hacktivist collectives (incl. A/I, Indymedia, Isole nella Rete) to the fediverse; A/I is a recurring case study.
• Söderberg, Johan, Resistance to the Current: The Dialectics of Hacking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022. ISBN 978-0-262-37200-8.
  • History of the hacker movement; A/I is studied for its role in the history of the hacker movement (p. 202).
• Delfanti, Alessandro, Biohackers: The Politics of Open Science. London: Pluto Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7453-3280-2.
  • Acknowledgments: gratitude “to the Italian hackmeeting community … and to the Autistici/Inventati collective for providing me and thousands of others with free software tools and anonymous mailboxes, and for keeping online their more or less reliable services regardless of police searches, shutdowns or lack of money.”
• Costanza-Chock, Sasha, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-262-35686-2. Open access: https://designjustice.mitpress.mit.edu
  • Lists A/I (p. 118) among non-commercial hosting collectives (with Riseup and May First/People Link); also includes a glossary entry: “Autistici/Inventati. Italian hacker activist collectives, authors of the book +Kaos.”
• Bazzichelli, Tatiana, The Net as Artwork: Artists’ Networks in Fluxus, Cyber Culture, and Net Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. (Earlier Italian ed.: Networking. La rete come arte, Milan: Luca Sossella, 2000.)
  • Net-art history by a Harvard art historian; discusses the Italian hacker-art milieu (Tozzi, Isole nella Rete, Hackmeeting) and notes that the Hackmeeting community was hosted on the Autistici/Inventati server (hackmeeting@inventati.org), and describes A/I’s Plan R distributed server design. PDF: https://www.networkingart.eu/pdf/networking_bazzichelli.pdf

1.3 Academic books on Italian hacking & hacktivism

• Di Corinto, Arturo & Tommaso Tozzi, Hacktivism. La libertà nelle maglie della rete [Freedom in the mesh of the net]. Rome: Manifestolibri, 2002. ISBN 88-7285-249-8. Released under GFDL.
  • Foundational account of Italian hacktivism (Tozzi is an A/I co-founder and coined “hacker art” in 1989); covers the pre-history of A/I (BBS era, Centri sociali, cybernet).
• Chiccarelli, Stefano & Andrea Monti, Spaghetti Hacker. Storia, tecnica e aspetti giuridici del hacking in Italia [History, technique and legal aspects of hacking in Italy]. 2nd ed. Rome: Monti & Ambrosini, 2011 (1st ed. 1997, Apogee). ISBN 978-88-8947914-8.
  • The reference history of Italian hacking (Andrea Monti is a law professor at Sapienza, Rome); documents the hacker collectives that formed A/I and the legal disputes (incl. the Trenitalia parody-site case). Cited in the Italian Wikipedia article “Hacktivismo in Italia.”
• Pasquinelli, Matteo (ed.), Media activism: strategie e pratiche della comunicazione indipendente: mappa internazionale e manuale d’uso. Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2002.
  • Academic anthology on mediactivism (Pasquinelli: Sapienza/Google scholar); maps early Italian mediatic infrastructures incl. A/I’s pirate radio (radio.inventati.org).
• Andretta, Massimiliano, Donatella Della Porta, Lorenzo Mosca & Harald Reiter, Global, noglobal, new global. La protesta contro il G8 a Genova [The protest against the G8 in Genoa]. Rome–Bari: Laterza, 2002. ISBN 978-88-420-6769-6.
  • The standard social-movement study of the 2001 Genoa G8 (Della Porta: Bocconi/Politecnico di Milano), the event in which A/I and Indymedia Italia became prominent.
• Ippolita, Anime elettriche. Riti e miti social [Electric souls. Rites and myths of the social]. Milan: Jaca Book, 2016. ISBN 978-88-16-41336-8.
  • Book by the Ippolita research group (Milan; related to the A/I sphere) on digital identities and social media; A/I is studied “on the subject of digital identities and social media” (per the EN Wikipedia entry on A/I).
• Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7619-2688-7.
  • Reference encyclopedia with an entry on Autistici/Inventati (p. 217) alongside Riseup and May First/People Link.

2. Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Barassi, Veronica & Emiliano Treré (2012). “Does Web 3.0 come after Web 2.0? Deconstructing theoretical assumptions through practice.” New Media & Society, 14(8), 1269–1285. DOI: 10.1177/1461444812445878
  • Quotes an A/I member (2010–11 interview) on the goal of “creating [a digital identity] infrastructure, similar to the new corporate models, but that is free from corporate power and challenges them” (pp. 1280–81); frames A/I within activists “trying to find ways to resist technological structures.”
• Barassi, Veronica & Lorenzo Zamponi (2020). “Social media time, identity narratives and the construction of political biographies.” Social Movement Studies, 19(5–6), 592–608. DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2020.1718489
  • Long-term qualitative research among Italian social-movement activists; describes A/I-run email as “an autonomous infrastructure built” by the movement outside corporate platforms.
• Gerbaudo, Paolo (2017). “From cyber-autonomism to cyber-populism: An ideological history of digital activism.” tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 15(2), 478–490. DOI: 10.31265/triplec.v15.i2.773
  • Identifies A/I among the “alternative service providers (ISPs) such as Riseup, Aktivix, Inventati and Autistici” that catered for the anti-globalisation movement, and frames them within “cyber-autonomism” and the “Islands in the Net” / TAZ imaginary (p. 486).
• Cavallotti, Diego (2024). “‘The Human Tide Mounts High’: Indymedia Italia and Genoa’s G8 in 2001.” Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, 24(42), 37–52. DOI: 10.54103/2036461X/22557
  • Media-documentation of Genoa’s G8 protests by Indymedia Italia (NGV video archive, hosted by A/I); notes A/I’s formation “between 2000 and 2001 (Beritelli 2012…)” and uses A/I’s web archives as primary sources.
• Hintz, Arne & Stefania Milan (2010). “Social Science is Police Science: Researching Grass-Roots Activism.” International Journal of Communication, 4, Feature 837–844.
  • Methodological essay on researching “grass-roots tech groups” (alternative hosting, e-mail, blogging platforms); gives Autistici/Inventati as the key Italian example alongside Riseup.net (US).

3. Conference paper (digital forensics)

• Chlapoutakis, George (2009). “The Case of the Plan R* Network of Resistant Communication: Implications to Digital Forensic Investigations.” In Emerging Advances in Digital Evidence, 3rd Year Digital Evidence Development Conference, Teeside, UK, 2009.
  • Academic (conference) study of A/I’s Plan R* redundant/distributed server architecture from a digital-forensics standpoint. (Author: George Chlapoutakis, University of Sunderland; papers list: https://secbible.org/papers/)

4. Academic dissertations

• Sorci, Giuliana (2019). I Social Network Indipendenti: nuova frontiera dei media digitali [Independent social networks: a new frontier of digital media]. PhD thesis, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, 30 May 2019. Repository: IRIS UniCT, handle 20.500.11769/582799.
  • Section 3.2.2 “Il progetto ‘Autistici/Inventati’”: detailed case study — origins in LOA (Milan) and Sgamati/Inventati (Florence, CPA), Bologna, the role of Indymedia, the “Paranoia” re-naming, the 2004 wiretapping (Aruba backdoor), Plan R*, the 2004 Trenitalia lawsuit and the 2008–09 Kaos Tour.
• Bacco, Francesco Saverio (2026). L’antagonismo digitale. Conflitto politico e democrazia nella post-modernità [Digital antagonism: political conflict and democracy in post-modernity]. PhD thesis, 37th cycle, Doctoral Programme in Political Studies, Sapienza University of Rome. Repository: IRIS Roma1, bitstream 11573/1759493.
  • Extensive treatment of A/I as a “digital antagonistic collective”: name etymology (autistici/inventati), the 2001 manifesto (autistici.org/who/manifesto), LOA and the Florentine CPA, its services (email, NoBlogs, e.g. Cavallette, Dark Nights, Croce Nera Anarchica on A/I infrastructure), and A/I’s role in the history of digital antagonism.
• Schiavo, Greta (2025/26). L’eredità invisibile. Il ricordo del G8 di Genova nella memoria collettiva [The invisible legacy: the Genoa G8 in collective memory]. BA thesis (Laurea in Scienze Psicologiche dello Sviluppo, della Personalità e delle Relazioni Interpersonali), University of Padua; supervisor: Prof. Adriano Zamperini.
  • Studies Genoa-2001 in collective memory; engages the A/I/Indymedia literature (cites Cavallotti 2024, Cinéma & Cie 24(42), 37–52).

5. Academic journal essays (peer-reviewed periodical)

• Meschini, E.R. (2020). “Squatting the Net: attivismo e digitale nelle prime esperienze italiane tra anni ’90 e 2000” [Digital activism in the first Italian experiences of the 90s and 2000s]. Kabul Magazine (peer-reviewed journal of contemporary arts & cultures, Rome), n. 17, “Hyper” special issue, April 2020.
  • Traces the lineage from Tommaso Tozzi’s Hacker Art to “the Autistici/Inventati social center,” Indymedia and the early Italian net-activist scene. PDF: https://www.kabulmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kmag_Squatting-the-Net-attivismo-e-digitale-nelle-prime-esperienze-italiane-tra-anni-90-e-2000-1.pdf

6. Related academic & scholarly works citing A/I (secondary references)

• Ritimo (2018). Technological Sovereignty, Vol. 2. Rome: Ritimo. PDF: https://www.ritimo.org/IMG/pdf/sobtech2-en-with-covers-web-150dpi-2018-01-10.pdf — cites “+Kaos: Ten Years Hacking and Media Activism, Beritelli, ed., 2017” in the discussion of alternative digital infrastructures.
• Institute of Network Cultures (2024). Archiving Activism in the Digital Age (conference proceedings, INC 2024). Amsterdam. PDF: https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ArchivingActivismintheDigitalAge_INC24_TOD52.pdf — references A/I’s +KAOS (2017) and A/I’s archival work (NGV video archive, archive.autistici.org).
• De Sola Pool / P.S. & related digital-activism literature — e.g. the Sorci (2019) thesis and the Kabul Magazine (2020) issue situate A/I within the broader “independent social network” and “islands in the net” scholarship; see also Gerbaudo (2017) and Kaun & Uldam (2018), “Digital activism: After the hype,” New Media & Society (which builds on Gerbaudo’s cyber-autonomism framing in which A/I is cited).
• Tomasino, Daniela (ed.) (2012) — Società e Scienze Sociali book series entry for “+Kaos: 10 anni di hacking e mediattivismo” (publisher cataloguing; signals its treatment as a sociological text).

7. Primary sources & grey literature (frequently cited in the scholarship above)

• Autistici/Inventati manifesto — “We want everything / We want free…” (autistici.org/who/manifesto); quoted in Bacco (2026) and the A/I literature.
• Autistici/Inventati, “A brief description: CRACKDOWN, violato autistici.org” (June 2005) — primary account of the 2004 wiretapping; archived at archive.org/details/git.autistici.org_bundles_20260826.
• EDRi (European Digital Rights) EDRIgrams — (a) “Autistici wins case over railroad parody site” (EDRIgram 2-18, 22 September 2004), https://edri.org/our-work/edrigramnumber2-18treni/ ; (b) “Police backdoor discovered in Italian alternative server” (EDRIgram 3-13, 29 June 2005), https://edri.org/our-work/edrigramnumber3-13backdoor/
• Di Corinto, Arturo (2004). “Una censura ad alta velocità” [Censorship at high speed]. il manifesto, 2 September 2004 — on the Trenitalia takedown order (cited by EDRi and the academic literature).
• +Kaos free PDFs — Agenzia X (IT, 2012): https://www.agenziax.it/sites/default/files/free-download/kaos.pdf ; Institute of Network Cultures (EN, 2017): https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/kaos.pdf

8. Notes on coverage

• Most substantive academic treatments of A/I itself: the two PhD theses (Sorci 2019, Catania; Bacco 2026, Sapienza) and Sorci’s 2025 monograph Server ribelli; among articles, Barassi & Treré (2012), Barassi & Zamponi (2020), Cavallotti (2024), Hintz & Milan (2010), Gerbaudo (2017) and Chlapoutakis (2009).
• A/I as primary source for its own history: +Kaos (2012; English 2017) — the book is itself a peer-cited text (Beritelli 2012) in the academic literature above.
• Contextual scholarship: the Genoa 2001 literature (Andretta, Della Porta, Mosca & Reiter 2002; Cavallotti 2024), the Italian hacker-history literature (Di Corinto & Tozzi 2002; Chiccarelli & Monti 2011; Bazzichelli 2006), and the digital-activism literature (Gerbaudo 2017; Renzi 2020; Pasquinelli 2002).
• 2026 event: the US SDGT designation of A/I (26 August 2026) and its subsequent shutdown (6 September 2026) are covered by the press (NYT, The Intercept, Reason, La Repubblica, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Manifesto) and institutional statements (US State Department, Banca Etica, ISOC Italia); as of the compilation date, peer-reviewed academic analyses of the sanctions episode are still forthcoming.

Method note: compiled via web search (Google/Bing-style search, Wikipedia reference lists, publisher and university-repository pages: IRIS UniCT, IRIS Roma1, SAGE, MIT Press, UMN Press, tripleC, IJOC, New Media & Society, Social Movement Studies, Cinéma & Cie, Kabul Magazine, Agenzia X, Institute of Network Cultures, Meltemi, Pluto Press, DeriveApprodi, Manifestolibri, Laterza, Jaca Book, SAGE, Monti & Ambrosini). Each citation was cross-checked against at least two independent sources where possible (publisher page + citing academic work + repository record).