[hackerspaces] are we creating a political discussion list?

[Phillip Rhodes]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 1:12 PM, Justis Peters <justis.peters at gmail.com> wrote:
> On the first thread where discussions of DoD and DARPA turned into dozens of
> participants, we were told to "shut up and hack" by some folks who thought
> it was noise. A few people suggested that we get our own list.
>
> Are we going to create that discussion list or are we going to continue
> turning this list into a political discussion list?
>
> I think that these discussions are highly relevant to the business of
> running a hackerspace, but I do not think that so strongly that I would want
> to lose a bunch of subscribers. Conversation that is inclusive of everyone
> is sometimes more important than conversation that is inclusive of every
> topic.

My personal opinion?  I acknowledge that not everyone is interested in
the political stuff and I hate the idea
of turning people off of the list due to the content.  But I
personally don't think that "political" discussion is
necessarily off-topic per-se.   But I'm one of those people for whom
hacking is fundamentally a political thing.
I make very little distinction between hacking and politics these days.

I see governments, large corporations (hi, Sony, Microsoft, etc.) and
other players on the world-stage as trying to
control access to information, and to control the flow of information,
as a way to perpetuate their own agenda
at the expense of the people.  I have a problem with that, and my
hacking is slowly taking on more and more
of a political tone, since I see things in terms of "hackers versus
the bad guys" with the stakes being some very
fundamental things - such as the right to hack your own property,
which you bought and paid for.

But, to be fair, I'm a pretty radical anarcho-capitalist /
crypto-anarchist and my views may not exactly be what
you'd call "mainstream."  <shrug />


Phil