---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Adam Shand adam@shand.net Date: Oct 23, 2007 4:44 PM Subject: [wordup] Hackers Space: The Final Frontier To: wordup@lists.spack.org
Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/hackers-space-t.html
Hackers Space: the Final Frontier By Marty graham October 20, 2007 | 8:44:39 PM
Imagine a device that looks like a lawnmower, rolls up to you and shows you your wifi password. It's Hackerbot, and 3ricj says people react kindly to the little bot, not like they do to the evil hacker stereotype. Or a CDMA device sent up in a balloon that works until the batteries fail.
This is what happens when hackers have a space - Hackerspace, in Seattle. Founded on April Fool's 2005, it's full of things that explode, burn, whirr and hum, and people who play with them.
"It takes money to do this, but you've got a bigger pool of people to raise money," 3ricj says. With an evolving group of members, people try art, hardware hacks and collective projects in the 3,000 square foot space.
Members have lots of freedom inside, but they also think through the results of what they do.
"It's important you don't disrupt the local ecosystem because once the cops start showing up your project is in trouble," 3ricj says. "Sharing a case of beer and sitting in a corner isn't really a good use for the space."
They've got dozens of projects underway, a pile of electronics finally sorted for easy use. They use wikis to track supplies, keep project lists and notes.
Hackerspace is a real example of hacker gatherings, infrastructure in the community that the Hacker Foundation is promoting.
"You have to organize," says Nick Farr, who set up 'hackers on a plane', hauling hackers from DefCon to Germany for a hacker camp. "All it takes is getting a group of people who are local and interested and start talking about it, get to a shared vision."
"It gets really hard to pursue projects in a house, it's important to have a space you can invite people into," he says.
NYC Resistor is creating a space in Manhattan, another group is working on an art gallery/hacker space in San Francisco, possibly the two most expensive cities in North America.
"Almost any potentially public space that you can build walls and lay network cable in can be a hacker space," Farr says. "Look at any public space in your community where you can start to create a hacker space."
Almost all the public hacker spaces created have failed because the people who started the project burned out from the drama of it all. And there's the risk of surprise expenses - holes punched or insurance costs.
"Noboby's going to do the community organizing for you," says Farr. "We're encouraging you to do this because it's a cool idea for people to have a place to collaborate."
Some of the things that come from hackerspaces are fascinating - Lara Sobel's RFID shielding pouches wallets, made from trash and essentially an open source project.
"I posted instructions for making them online so anyone can do it," Sobel says. "I learned how to fuse the trash bags and defeat RFID readers from available information and I'm sharing how to do it."
Besides fused trashbags, Lara uses aluminum can bits to provide shielding whether the pouch is open or closed. They Velcro shut and fit credit cards, licenses and passports.
Sobel started making them because she wanted to be able to turn her RFID technology on herself to people she trusts.
"I want a human interaction to make a trust decision," she says.
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