[hackerspaces] A New Hacker Has Joined Your Party!

[Far McKon]

Stacked reply:

To Ross <rsmith at i3detroit.com>:
> I suppose what I'm getting at is, I don't mean to hijack anyone's party.
Thanks, I appreciate the thought, and  don't think there there is any
intentional hijacking going on, but I do worry about mission drift.

>I've always seen these spaces through a lens of personal development, more than activism and advocacy
I think a lot of people do, and I think that many see it through an
even more narrow lens of their own personal development, and not in
the sense of how they can help others develop.

To Tim <<tim.saylor at gmail.com>
So I think, in some senses we are in agreement that there are
different facets of the ideas and movement.  And I'm glad you're
honest and clear about what parts you have interest in.

> Open network / sane copyright / culture laws?  [...] Getting in to that invites a lot
> of politics into the space's culture,   and I think that's too much of a distraction
>  from making things.
There are bills and rules that are outlawing types of making things.
Poor copyright laws, a broken patent system, unfair access to
resource. I think those are bigger hurdles to making things than the
time absorbed by discussion and politics.

Examples: The new FCC 'neutrality'  rules, if the were in place 10
years ago, would have killed a lot of startups, youtube is the best
example).  Strong Crypto use to be illegal.   DMCA prevents a lot of
us from playing and learning on hardware *we paid for*.

I those kind of laws are a lot more of a barrier to making things than
heated discussion.

> Everything else either supports that goal or is a distraction from it.
To me, a lot of that list seem to be local optimizations that make it
easier for you to make things, and  if they help anyone else, that is
a side effect. I could be totally wrong, and it could be you do a lot
of other stuff to help people.  But they all seem to be to be 'local
maxima' solutions. Do you think that is a fair description?

As always, I'm glad to be proven wrong, and hear better ides.

Hack on,
- Far McKon