[sudoroom] separation of politics and hackerspace?

[Marc Juul]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Jenny Ryan <jenny at thepyre.org> wrote:
>
> Mark makes an important point, and I think its essential that we
> collectively explore the history of hackerspaces and their role in
> communities of practice - their 'political function' in society.

I completely agree with Mark, Jacob and Jenny. I am not interested in
a hackerspace that is just a place to hang out and eat pizza and play
with <insert your favorite techonology>. While that aspect of a
hackerspace is important, it is not enough to make it interesting.

Let me share a little anecdote: In 2009 I co-founded a hackerspace in
Copenhagen. In the beginning we had some interest from local activists
who were fighting for social justice in various ways. At some point
some of these people started discussing possible activities at the
intersection of activism and hacking, including defacing websites of
organizations they didn't agree with. I reacted very strongly against
this and effectively forced the hackerspace to become non-political.
Though the space is non-hierarchical and fairly open, the decision to
be non-political had the effect, over some time, of scaring away many
of the people interested in social justice and, in my opinion, made
the space less interesting and less diverse. The space in Copenhagen
is now a really cool makerspace. By being "non-political" we lost some
of the people who care strongly about making a difference in the
world, and got more of the people who just want to build robots.

I am not interested in creating another makerspace. Hacking, to me, is
not just about clever use of technology. It is about clever use of
technology that attempts to make a difference. It is about the hacker
ethic.

This is my opinion, and I feel rather strongly about it: We should
explicitly state that sudo room is about hacking, social justice,
fairness, openness, art, beauty, freedom, decentralization, and so on,
and not be afraid to put the sudo room name on awesome activist
projects made by sudo room people.

That doesn't mean that we can't brew some beer without thinking about
the social ramifications, but it probably means that we should attempt
to discourage a situation where most of the sudo room activities
consists of the same bunch of guys hanging out, <insert your favorite
beer-like technology activity> and eating pizza. I also seriously
think that we could have a lot of fun worrying about the social
ramifications of beer brewing! (I'm currently working on such a
project. Ask me how!)

> Another key component of hackerspaces is the 'hacker ethic', which I'm sure
> Mark or Marc could speak to better than I.

The term 'hacker ethic' was coined by Stephen Levy, who summed it up
with these six statements:

 Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something
about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always
yield to the Hands-On Imperative!

 All information should be free.

 Mistrust authority — promote decentralization.

 Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as
degrees, age, race, sex, or position.

 You can create art and beauty on a computer.

 Computers can change your life for the better.

While the terms hacking and hackerspace are now being applied very
broadly to a whole set of different groups and activities, the hacker
ethic is still strongly represented in the hacker community. Glancing
at the list of talks from some of the notable hacker conferences in
recent times, the tendencies towards activism, social justice and
community become obvious. To give an example, the Chaos Communications
Camp 2007 included these talks:

 B.A.T.M.A.N. - Better Approach to Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking: New
routing algorithm and daemon for wireless community networks.

 23 ways to fight for your rights.

 WIPO Broadcasting Treaty: Lobbying on an International Scale.

 Campaigns for promoting and defending digital freedom in France: How
the french libre software activists do it.

 This can change everything! The most fundamental power of computers
may turn out to be allowing citizens’ control over the shaping of
governance...

http://events.ccc.de/camp/2007/Fahrplan/day_4.en.html

Many of the important technologies and ideas that we use in
hackerspaces are strongly rooted in the hacker ethic. These include
Peer to Peer technologies, Free Software / Open Source and the free
read/write access to information in general.

You can read more about the hacker ethic here:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

If you are at all interested in the early history of hacking, I highly
recommend reading the first chapter of Stephen Levy's book: Hackers:
Heroes of the Computer Revolution. It is in the public domain (first
chapter only) and available here in various formats:

 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/729


--
Marc Juul