Never Knowingly Understood

[quercus]

http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/

'Ere, John, You been at that psychogeography again?

Comments

[hirez]

Coo. Good stuff.

[jarkman]

How *do* you make a barricade out of Arduinos, exactly ?

[hirez]

There's that, too.

While things like XS4ALL and CCC have their roots in the political movements that the nice man seems to care about, I don't think the Hackspaces do. I suspect that while you could talk about 'the hackspace movement' in a usefully abstract and arm-wavy sense, attempting to nail a cohesive political ideology to the set of them would be a complete waste of time.

In effect, they're more autonomous/anarchic than bloke is comfortable with and he is now waving his stick at the terrible people who've thought for themselves and rejected his authority.

On the other hand, a hackspace table at the next anarchist bookfair would be an interesting thing. Well, for values of 'interesting' that tend toward 'car crash'.

[jarkman]

Yes - I think there is a clear 'hackspace movement', with something of an ideology, but it really isn't a political one.

Poetically, it really is about seizing the means of production in a very concrete way, and probably does more in that direction than a lot of political movements. I'm all in favour of 'tiny geeky workshop paradises'.

He's right about the gender balance, though. That continues to trouble me.

[quercus]

But why is the gender balance what it is? Because women are excluded by a hostile geekerati? Are women approaching Hackspaces only to be turned away?

If it's not that, then it's some other reason. That's the reason for the gender balance (whatever it is), not in-house geek politics.