[hackerspaces] DARPA Sponsored Hacker Space Assessment

[mars at redecho.org]

> DARPA is comprised of people as well.  Many of them are good people.

I'm sure there are good people working for the FBI, too. Even the CIA must
still have a secretary or two that hasn't had to torture a prisoner yet. 
And the TSA, well, when they take off the latex gloves and go home,
they're just people with families, you know?

I don't need to know what kind of people work for DARPA to know that I
have a big problem with the organization. Their mission is plainly stated:
everything they do is intended to help create more powerful weapons for
the US military. If DARPA gives you money it is because they think you are
somehow going to help them in that mission, and I have a hard time
understanding the world view of a person who would voluntarily spend their
free time helping make better weapons for the US military.

It is certainly a goal completely contrary to my own motivations for
hacking and for helping organize a hackerspace. I'm not just having fun
here - I'm trying to help create the world I want to live in. That's a
world with less coercion, fewer hierarchical organizations, more freedom,
more cooperative webs of self-organizing individuals. I want work to be
more like play, with experimentation and learning throughout. I want to
make awesome stuff by collaborating with my peers. I want information to
be free. I want neither to boss nor to be bossed.

There is no conceivable way that helping the US military develop better
weapons would further these goals.