[hackerspaces] Hackerspaces origins history

Arclight arclight at gmail.com
Tue Aug 12 19:51:30 CEST 2014


I would agree with your narrative from my perspective. Our group
started coming together from a BBS we ran from 1992-2000, which had
real-life user meets. Then we had mailing lists and the Internet and
still had get-togethers, parties, build nights. We went for an
industrial space to home all of our tools and projects because we got
tired of getting yelled at by the neighbors for welding at 0300 and
such.

Actually, I should qualify that: I agree with your history timeline,
up until the point we all become social justice warriors.

Perhaps this is unusual, but we're just hackers.  Other than the
occasional EFF donation, we really don't want to address the world's
problems as a group. It's not the point of our space. We have Linux
and GNU software installed, and we have legit Windows software too. We
pay rent to have exclusive control of out space and don't have any
desire to fight that.  We don't let people come in who we feel are not
contributing something positive to the space. We aren't trying to
fight the man. We just want to make cool things and be around
interesting people. Our space simply doesn't have a greater aspiration
than that.

Now, there is something in what we do that does make us all outliers
or possibly outlaws. It's in each of our heads individually and it's
reflected sometimes in what we do, where we push the boundaries. But I
don't need a label, a cause or validation for this. It's just who I am
and what I am. Perhaps this is a bad attitude and myopic and I'm
unable to see the greater good that I am suppose to be organizing
towards. But this is my perspective.

Arclight
23b Shop

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 7:33 AM, Mark Janssen <dreamingforward at gmail.com> wrote:
> A rough attempt at a history from my pov:
>
> I would say such places as the Homebrew Computer Club and various
> other American and European Computer Clubs were the start of it, back
> in the 70s.  1) People gathered in other people`s garages to talk
> computers and make/do stuff and 2) there was a community focus.
> (Other people were making stuff in their garage but the community
> wasn't invited, or community was invited but they were only having
> BBQ.)  Steve Wozniak and friends created the first Apple computer in
> such an environment, for example -- a personal computer for the
> masses.
>
> After that personal computer revolution, such movements went out of
> garages into virtual spaces.  Everyone now had their own world on the
> computer, and connecting with each other to Bulletin Board Systems.
> However, it should be noted that the HAM Radio folks were doing this
> since the 50's or so.  It's just that the personal computer
> accelerated these interpersonal connections by many-fold.  These
> movements culminated in the Internet.
>
> In between the Personal Computer revolution and the Internet
> revolution, you have Linux  -- the catalyst between the two that would
> create the elite hacker, centered around GNU and the spirit of Free
> Software.
>
> Hackers at this point in history were embroiled in various battles,
> trying to maintain the gains they got with the Internet.  The Law
> attempted to bring it all down with Napster, and that ruptured the
> movement considerably.
>
> Where it gets interesting is mid-2000s.  That is were I personally,
> anchor the creation of "hackerspaces" -- where it is a named movement.
> The purpose, in my mind, was to create a new economic system (really a
> new world order), because clearly the old order was no longer good or
> trustable and was threatening to take every hope for a better world
> away.
>
> For various esoteric and personal reasons, I don't count anything
> approaching "hackerspaces" until 2005.   Because until the law was
> bringing everything down, there simply was no purpose.  SF_X, for me,
> was such a space.  Hardly anyone knew of it, because it wasn't trying
> to stick itself above the weeds of anonymity, to be popular or
> well-known (yet).  It was a tiny little seed amidst the wilderness of
> the antichrist that had become the US economy.  It was going to rely
> on the power of a vision and heart.  But in the end, that little
> sapling was buffeted to death by the winds of stupidity and desert of
> passivity.
>
> I was fighting to fix 100 years of America -- a country that refused
> to take responsibility for it`s own history and that had isolated
> itself from the rest of the world.  I was fighting to re-establish the
> Right to Live (in a land that prides itself for "liberty and justice
> for all") after being arrested for sleeping on unoccupied property.
> Without some accountability and a transition by and of America, it was
> simply unethical to make yet another economic system, which would
> surely be co-opted to extend the existing system of insane growth on
> the already existing cancer of the G20 economy.
>
> But in end, I fought alone.  The issue that brought down sf_x was the
> same issue that I was fighting:  property and the right it gives to
> exclude others.  Either people didn't know how to take the Law into
> their own hands, or they were simply too sedated by all the comforts
> the antichrist economy gives them.  (I say "antichrist economy", not
> to invoke religion, but to point to a system that relies on genocide
> and torture to feed itself.).  I still don't know why the G8 protests
> of Seattle didn't amount to anything, but then I also remember just
> how difficult it was to pull the Law back into my own hands where I
> could fight on the grounds that it was founded upon.
>
> The real question should be, is the revolution dead?
>
> Marxos
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