[hackerspaces] Hacking the Spaces: A critical acclaim of what was, is and could be a hackerspace (or hacklab, for that matter)

[Seth Hardy]

>    >it's hard to enter a discussion with someone who calls your viewpoint
>    nonsense before you even get a word in.
>    Sorry that I'm the first one to tell you that there is a political
>    dimension in all we are doing. I hope it wasn't too rude of me...

that means there's also a political dimension in my having citizenship 
in a country... but that doesn't mean everything i do in that country is 
political or even that i agree with any/all of the politics of that 
country. 

and since just about everyone has citizenship somewhere, i guess that 
means there's nothing in the world that goes on that isn't political...?

>    Fact is that there is a long tradition of hackerspaces in the field of
>    leftist (or rather leftist) counterculture. Of course you can do

and i'm not disputing this. "there exists" != "for each".

>    whatever you like in your little hackerspace in 2009. All I ask for is

i'm glad we're able to have this productive and respectful conversation.

>    a certain amount of _respect_ for the difficult work that was done
>    back then. Work that was be far more challenging than plugging in a
>    soldering iron and bringing a Wii. We shouldn't forget that.

nobody's forgetting it, but saying "there is a history of political 
involvement for hackerspaces" is very different than saying 
"hackerspaces are political tools/platforms/whatever."

and for the record, the work i've done in setting up my little 
hackerspace may not have been of life or death importance, but it was 
still pretty challenging for me. that doesn't mean i'm claiming it's 
more important than the Great Political Hackerspaces of Yore; it's 
something different. maybe the fact that we've got soldering irons and 
wiis means it's something different at this point?

thanks for being the first one to tell me how wrong i am about my little 
hackerspace though, it wasn't too rude at all! but, please, get your 
facts straight in the future-- we don't have a wii. :(

/s.

-- 
seth hardy: shardy at aculei.net * 647.890.1452 * www.aculei.net/~shardy
(gpg - 0x5E345628): BF63 A0A7 3BCA 1D7D EDE1 63BF 46FB 95D9 5E34 5628
	"God is not on the side of the heavy battalion,
		but on the side of the best shot."  -- Voltaire
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