[sudoroom] separation of politics and hackerspace?

Thu May 10 20:25:33 CEST 2012

Hi all! First, thanks to Phil (assuming I'm following the names here
correctly) for bring the information about Sudo Room to the /r/oakland
subreddit, I was/am super excited to learn about Sudo Room, also I'm "that
guy" that asked about the social justice issues as it relates to Sudo Room.

I feel like I need to point out that at this point I'm being a pretty lame
armchair opinion-haver. In my defense I didn't know about Sudo Room until a
week or two ago, and I was out of town camping during the fundraiser last
week. But still, this email and my posts on reddit are about the extent of
my participation thus far. What's more, I'm very ignorant about the whole
"hack space" thing. I've never been part of one, so I don't really know
what to expect or what I'm talking about, I only know what I've always
imagined when I hear "hacker space" (scenes from the movie Hackers ;)).

I think this is where I'm really coming from (a parallel): I'm an atheist,
but grew up going to a catholic church. When I entered highschool I stopped
going to church, but through the last 10 years I came to realize that I
missed the sense of community that I had and the things that we did as a
group that I felt good/proud to do (soup kitchens, wrapping presents during
xmas to raise money for charities, etc). I had felt good about connecting
with other people in ways I normally wouldn't sitting at home watching Game
of Thrones or programming.

Well, two years ago I moved to Oakland and realized there were a bunch of
UU churches. Seemed in theory to be what I was looking for and perhaps what
I missed from the catholic church and community, without the god stuff. I
went to a UU in the Berkeley hills and it was awesome. The service I went
to involved members of the church above the age of 80 talking about dealing
with growing older: their bodies breaking down, the fact that death was not
so far away, etc. I really really enjoyed it, and I thought about ways that
perhaps I could help to make a person who was short on years a bit happier.
I appreciated my youth and life. There was what I would consider some
"fluff" in other parts of the service, but that was cool, I was happy to
have a variety of people there doing their thing, learning little things
about myself or in some cases finding humor.

This year, I attended several services at the UU in Oakland (I believe it's
on 14th). This community seemed much more focused on "Social Justice". One
service I attended had an immigrant house worker come in and talk about the
horrible situations she had to work in, going unpaid at certain jobs and
having no legal recourse to get her unpaid wages. My heart went out for the
person. But the community and church in general seemed fired up about it.
There were petitions to sign after her talk, things to do. Another time
there was a passionate and angry woman talking about police brutality,
there was anger and outrage at various people. But these issues are
complicated, and I don't know how I felt about signing petitions that I
didn't understand, and I certainly didn't feel any anger at anybody in
particular. No doubt in my mind how I felt about the speakers or their
situations (sympathetic, sad, etc), but how I felt about some of the issues
being thrown around I wasn't sure. One thing I WAS sure about was that I
felt pressured and out of place. It wasn't that I didn't think the things
that were talking about were important, but I wasn't interested in debating
the church community or saying "hey guys, this is complicated, this is
something I can't just participate in without understanding the issues for
myself, and as important as the issue is there are other issues or things
that I'm more interested in understanding right now" because in that
environment I felt that sounded too much like "I don't care".

At the end of the day, I'd HOPE for more of the first UU experience, less
of the second. Obviously a UU church and the Sudo Room hacker space are
different things, but that was what popped into my head. At the same time,
part of my point in typing all of that is that I think that having more of
a purpose or mission is GREAT, it's actually what I'm looking for. I'd like
to be inspired by smart people, if I'm lucky sometime help inspire somebody
else. I'd like to work in a team to complete a project. I'd like to share
ideas. I'd like to be a better programmer. I'd like to learn more about
electronics. I'd like to drink beer and meet new people. Maybe have a LAN
party even or play a board game! And behind it all I'd love to feel proud
of being part of something that had a bigger purpose, ideally something I
could actually participate in to help make somebody else's life better in a
real way.

Regardless, I'm really looking forward to getting involved, and hopefully
helping in some small ways to make Sudo Room great.

Sorry for the book, thanks for existing!

-kev

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:58 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd at gmail.com>wrote:

> I think the impression that SudoRoom is more about social justice than
> about "hacking" is simply due to the fact that we don't have a
> permanent space yet, and that we've been doing a lot of planning
> instead of working on projects. I'm sure we'll start seeing less talk
> and more hacking as soon as we actually get some space to spread out
> and tools to work with.
>
> Personally, I do not think that hackerspaces necessarily need to have
> a social mission. Sometimes it's fun just to get together with friends
> to tinker with stuff, or hold a LAN party. Some hackerspaces focus
> more on social justice and alternative communities. Some focus more on
> incubating ideas to commercialize them. Some focus on art and
> technology. And some just want to play with Legos. It's all good!
>
> That said - yes, some of the people involved in SudoRoom are very
> passionate about social justice issues, and I would expect we'll see
> some projects along those lines - whether it's designing web spaces
> for Occupy, or hacking cell phones for the homeless. But I wouldn't
> necessarily want that to *define* the space. If someone wants to work
> on some hacks for a better world - great! If someone wants to do some
> synthetic biology and create an E. coli that blinks, I think that
> should be OK too.
>
> Patrik
>
> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 6:21 PM, Phil <dude8604 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I decided last week to advertise the fundraiser on Reddit, in some of the
> > local subreddits.  There was one response I got that I think is
> something we
> > should discuss.
> >
> >
> > ----------------------
> >
> > Also, when I think Hacker Space, I think of a big (or small) space where
> > people can come and work on projects, either by themselves but in the
> > presence of others, or with a group. There may be some tools and stuff.
> You
> > pay money per month for use of the space.
> >
> > But on Sudo Room, there is a lot about social justice and etc etc etc.
> This
> > is great! But not what I guess I think about when I think about "hacker
> > space", and if I were to be honest not really what I'd be interested in
> > going to a "hacker space" for.
> >
> > So... what is Sudo Room really?
> >
> > --------------------
> >
> > The rest of the thread is
> > here:
> http://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/t4lex/sudo_room_a_newlyforming_east_bay_hackerspace/
> >
> >
> > So it seems like most of us have political interests, which I think Sudo
> > Room should definitely have room for, however I think to be inclusive
> > of everyone it should be separate from the hackerspace as an
> organization.
> >  Or somehow balance the two so that people like this are interested in
> > joining us.  What do you all think?
> >
> >
> > - Phil
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > sudoroom mailing list
> > sudoroom at lists.hackerspaces.org
> > http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/sudoroom
> >
> _______________________________________________
> sudoroom mailing list
> sudoroom at lists.hackerspaces.org
> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/sudoroom
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hackerspaces.org/pipermail/sudoroom/attachments/20120510/da136901/attachment.html>