Well said. It is always interesting to watch hackers age. When I read the article I felt that much of the angst was pining for the "old days" when things were better. But reminiscing always gets it wrong :-).
That said, I've been wondering of late about hacker spaces. I've been a member of Hacker Dojo now (Mountain View CA) for about 6 months and by and large when I am there it has a lot of people hanging out on the free WiFi and perhaps hacking but not a lot of interacting except with perhaps 1 or 2 close associates nearby. But in part it seems to have no purpose as hacking has had in the past. I'm trying to come up with ideas to change that.
Hacker spaces have definitely changed. In the 90s the one here was a crazy 24hr party, it's entire membership was anarchists with zero regard for laws which they considered only existed to control information. Somehow I managed amazing productivity yet was largely high out of my gourd with Skinny Puppy blasting in the background almost constantly. Everything was surprisingly well organized, we would all decide on something like we need 60 handsets to try to clone and we'd accomplish that by the end of the day. We need to code our own STS-like dialup chat board because we're not paying for a license. 25 of us would work on that until 6:00am the next morning and it'd be done even with the craziest of distractions going on, such as around 11pm a steady stream of local misfits would come in as we'd converted it into an all ages boozecan and defacto nightclub with a stupid amount of lights rigged up that were in hindsight absolutely frightening considering the terribad wiring job we hacked together. It looked like the video from Front242 - Operating Tracks but with more eye searing strobe lights.
Now the hacker space I go to is largely populated with professional developers and students so gone is the raging music, the drugs, the anarchy/activism, the close-knit community, the epic amount of crime and nobody knows each other. There's less women too, in the 90s I would say it was half and half with many girls actively participating. I can count on one hand the amount of female hackers I've seen at the new space. Even though our old space was drug fueled insanity more work seemed to get done. No group projects going on anymore, there's a few but it's usually something like making your bike glow in the dark and not hacking software just for the sake of hacking. Doesn't help that none of us have any spare time either, we are all too busy in careers/school to afford an all nighter hack session like back in the day. Barely any of us can even manage to coordinate a time when everybody can be in the same room for 5 mins for a meeting let alone work on any projects.
I know that sounds like a tautology, but bear with me. Without a project to rally behind, no one is going to automatically form little collectives and bang out cool stuff.
Things are either driven by one person or they are driven by multiple people after one person convinces them to participate and cajoles them into action. Someone, somewhere, has to provide the projects and the purpose. They then have to relentlessly follow through.
Interesting observation. I was a member of Hacker Dojo but let my membership lapse because I simply wasn't going there often enough; I still do pop in a couple times a month to use it as a coworking space (paying for the $10/day wifi access, not the free one) but I can't quite tell what I get out of it.
Then again, I'm not sure what I expect to get out of it, nor what I really should be putting into it. There don't seem to be many opportunities to strike up conversations but it's possible (probable) I'm being too passive in seeking them out.
Comments
Well said. It is always interesting to watch hackers age. When I read the article I felt that much of the angst was pining for the "old days" when things were better. But reminiscing always gets it wrong :-).
That said, I've been wondering of late about hacker spaces. I've been a member of Hacker Dojo now (Mountain View CA) for about 6 months and by and large when I am there it has a lot of people hanging out on the free WiFi and perhaps hacking but not a lot of interacting except with perhaps 1 or 2 close associates nearby. But in part it seems to have no purpose as hacking has had in the past. I'm trying to come up with ideas to change that.
Hacker spaces have definitely changed. In the 90s the one here was a crazy 24hr party, it's entire membership was anarchists with zero regard for laws which they considered only existed to control information. Somehow I managed amazing productivity yet was largely high out of my gourd with Skinny Puppy blasting in the background almost constantly. Everything was surprisingly well organized, we would all decide on something like we need 60 handsets to try to clone and we'd accomplish that by the end of the day. We need to code our own STS-like dialup chat board because we're not paying for a license. 25 of us would work on that until 6:00am the next morning and it'd be done even with the craziest of distractions going on, such as around 11pm a steady stream of local misfits would come in as we'd converted it into an all ages boozecan and defacto nightclub with a stupid amount of lights rigged up that were in hindsight absolutely frightening considering the terribad wiring job we hacked together. It looked like the video from Front242 - Operating Tracks but with more eye searing strobe lights.
Now the hacker space I go to is largely populated with professional developers and students so gone is the raging music, the drugs, the anarchy/activism, the close-knit community, the epic amount of crime and nobody knows each other. There's less women too, in the 90s I would say it was half and half with many girls actively participating. I can count on one hand the amount of female hackers I've seen at the new space. Even though our old space was drug fueled insanity more work seemed to get done. No group projects going on anymore, there's a few but it's usually something like making your bike glow in the dark and not hacking software just for the sake of hacking. Doesn't help that none of us have any spare time either, we are all too busy in careers/school to afford an all nighter hack session like back in the day. Barely any of us can even manage to coordinate a time when everybody can be in the same room for 5 mins for a meeting let alone work on any projects.
It has no purpose because there is no purpose.
I know that sounds like a tautology, but bear with me. Without a project to rally behind, no one is going to automatically form little collectives and bang out cool stuff.
Things are either driven by one person or they are driven by multiple people after one person convinces them to participate and cajoles them into action. Someone, somewhere, has to provide the projects and the purpose. They then have to relentlessly follow through.
Interesting observation. I was a member of Hacker Dojo but let my membership lapse because I simply wasn't going there often enough; I still do pop in a couple times a month to use it as a coworking space (paying for the $10/day wifi access, not the free one) but I can't quite tell what I get out of it.
Then again, I'm not sure what I expect to get out of it, nor what I really should be putting into it. There don't seem to be many opportunities to strike up conversations but it's possible (probable) I'm being too passive in seeking them out.
This is about the "other" hacking, that hacker dojo shuns.