[hackerspaces] Does the maker culture get the step on the hackers culture?

[Mars Saxman]

On Jul 3, 2014, at 2:26 PM, Mark Janssen wrote:

>> We call it ALTSpace. I don't care whether you call it a hackerspace or a
>> makerspace, it's a cool place either way.
> 
> You can call it what you want, friend, but without a business plan or
> a larger economic/political agenda, I call it a clubhouse, which is
> spelled: D-O-O-M-E-D.

In the long run, we're all doomed. In the meantime, ALTSpace has been operating for three and a half years, has expanded twice, has a slowly but steadily growing membership working on a broad array of different types of projects, and covers all of its bills every month without needing donations or sponsorship, or even having to advertise. 

> Without more *explicit* goals, you can go the way of sf_x which had a
> great credentialed team of PhDs and committed individuals, yet
> nonetheless dissipated by the power of entropy.

Sure, it's possible, even likely, that ALTSpace will eventually lose steam and fade away. So what? We'll all move on and do other things.  In the meantime, it's a cool space that people want to work in, it has value to the people who are involved in it, and that's enough for us to call it a success.

Whether they care about politics or not, everyone involved gets to practice self organization and build relationships based on mutual benefit rather than commercial exchange or exploitation, and that's a small way to help create the kind of world I would rather live in. It also gives people experience operating within such organizations, and a model they can learn from when they want to establish their own cooperative projects. 

-Mars