maker/hacker spaces

aka: maker movement

intro via Jeff Sturges and a church in detroit:

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so what is this?

A space for making, hacking, playing (definitions below via Bud Hunt).

A space where messy is ok, and failing is expected.

A space where you can tinker like a five year old, or make a robotic arm …

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examples abound..

‘s tinkering – gone school – Brightworks

 taking over the world..

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more on jeff sturges

fab lab – community workshop w/standard set of tools – generally considered fairly expensive
hacker space – community workshop of sorts… started in 80’s in germany, share – rather than illegally – taking something that exists and change into something else – generally people who are 18 or over – sharing finances, et al
maker space – general – for making – more of a mission driven space that is community based.. starting to include all these spaces – it’s the big circle drawn around everything – even make magazine would agree that maker space is coolit’s got to be a self-sustaining community – of money and people and… –
said charging for workshops keeps people valuing themmore ideal model – not need to ask funding
find peoplehttp://taratigerbrown.com/
also at @tarahttp://www.mtelliottmakerspace.com/_________________links to pdf of playbook

“Making something that starts virtual but quickly becomes tactile and usable in the everyday world is satisfying in a way that pure pixels are not.”

Now that money can be raised on sites such as Kickstarter, even large-scale investors have become unnecessary. But both overlook one key development: in a world where everyone is an entrepreneur, it’s hard work getting others excited about funding your project. Money goes to those who know how to attract attention.

Convivial tools rule out certain levels of power, compulsion, and programming, which are precisely those features that now tend to make all governments look more or less alike,” Illich wrote. He had little faith in traditional politics. Whereas Stewart Brand wanted citizens to replace politics with savvy shopping, Illich wanted to “retool” society so that traditional politics, with its penchant for endless talk, becomes unnecessary.

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on hacking the hackers

http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacker-ethos/

They might not describe themselves as hackers, but they carry an ethic of disdain towards systems that normally allow little agency on the part of ordinary individuals.

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like all gentrification, the influx into the scene of successive waves of ever less disaffected individuals results in a growing emphasis on the unthreatening elements of hacking over the subversive ones.

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The revised definition of the tech startup entrepreneur as a hacker forms part of an emergent system of Silicon Valley doublethink. individual startups portray themselves as ‘underdogs’ while simultaneously being aware of the enormous power and wealth the tech industry they’re a part of wields at a collective level. And so we see a gradual stripping away of the critical connotations of hacking.

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We need to confront an irony here. Gentrification is a pacification process that takes the wild and puts it in frames. I believe that hacking is the reverse of that, taking the ordered rules of systems and making them fluid and wild again. Where gentrification tries to erect safe fences around things, hacker impulses try to break them down, or redefine them. These are two countervailing forces within human society. The gentrification of hacking is… well, perhaps a perfect hack.

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The un-gentrified spirit of hacking should be a commons accessible to all.

gentrification