[hackerspaces] DARPA Sponsored Hacker Space Assessment

[Justis Peters]

On 12/06/2011 12:41 PM, Phillip Rhodes wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Thorsten Haas<chaos at skytee.de>  wrote:
>> I find it rather creepy to rather share such information with government
>> entities than the general public or other hacker spaces.
> To be honest, I find it creepy that we're even having this conversation.  Why is DARPA such a hot topic of conversation in the hackerspaces community?  Has it always been this way, or is this new?  (Sorry, I've been around the broader "hacker culture" for decades, but am fairly new to this list specifically, so I really don't know the norms here yet.)
AFAICT, DARPA has been reaching out to hackerspaces and to individuals 
in hackerspaces. In earlier threads, when I asked why the question of a 
DARPA grant was even relevant to a hackerspace, I was told that some 
hackerspaces had already been approached and were debating it.

In a related "coincidence", an acquaintance that I like contacted me to 
ask if SplatSpace would be willing to entertain a sales pitch from a 
friend of his who works for DARPA in their "Cyber Fast Track" program: 
http://cft.usma.edu/

 From what I have learned so far, they do not provide grants to 
hackerspaces; they provide grants to individual projects and to the 
individuals participating in those projects. That's all I know so far.

My current plan is to remain loyal to my ideology about open innovation 
and inclusion. I had previously assumed that DARPA would be against the 
"open innovation" part, but I see that they do sometimes sponsor 
research that is shared globally. I am dubious about whether they can 
"get it" about the inclusion part. That said, treating DARPA as "us" 
instead of as "them" would be to practice what I preach. If I want 
"them" to stop treating everyone else as "them", then I have to start 
treating "them" as "us".

Kind regards,
Justis