[Noisebridge-discuss] Piece on Hacker Spaces (with mention of NoiseBridge) in Irish Times

Danny O'Brien danny at spesh.com
Fri Nov 14 22:55:47 UTC 2008


Hey folks,

So I have a regular column in the Irish Times, and I wrote a little
about NoiseBridge in it. I mentioned the piece to Jake, and he
suggested I post it here.

I've already had one query about setting up a Dublin hackerspace (one
of the intentions of the article), so if any of you hear of people
interested in this (or London, where I also know a few people mulling
the idea), let me know, and I'll put them in touch with each other.

d.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2008/1024/1224715113204.html

THE FIRST hacker space I can recall was the L0ft: a Boston loft shared
by a hat-making company and a group of grungy security experts and
computer underground figures with names like "Mudge" and "Kingpin".

The L0ft lasted from 1992 to 2000: a group of smart minds working on
slightly edgy tech plans together in a shared environment: wiring
together wireless networks long before anyone was thinking of WiFi,
sketching out potential attacks on the internet that got the US
Congress worried.

When the L0ft started, it was hard to get hold of the technology you
needed to hatch such plans, unless you had the right job. And in 1992,
it wasn't easy to get a job unless you were the right sort of person.
The L0ft people weren't right in that sense - although their work
predicted a great deal of what was to happen in the dotcom boom.

In 2008, you see tattoos and piercings on chief executives and company
presidents in Silicon Valley, but the jobs are beginning to edge away
again. Just the right time for the return of the idea of a "hacker
space", a co-operatively run tech workspace that isn't for business,
and not quite for pure fun. That's what's happening at Noisebridge in
San Francisco's Mission district.

A rented apartment, the space has been commandeered by a group of
hardware and software enthusiasts who are paying $80 a month each to
pool their resources, and kit it out with high-speed internet, strange
hardware and stranger friends.

The truth is that hacker spaces have never quite gone away. In Europe,
where the movement has closer ties to the squatting collectives of
Germany and the Netherlands, hacker spaces have existed for many
years.

C-Base in Berlin and ASCII in Amsterdam were founded in the mid-1990s
and survived for over a decade; long enough to pass the knowledge back
to the US. Inspired by visits to European hacker spaces, New York
technologist Bre Pettis founded NYC Resistor in Brooklyn in 2007. A
similar crossover contact between European and west coast coders
spawned Noisebridge last month.

What do you do in a hacker space? Gossip, compare notes, learn and
teach seem to be the key activities: coders sit around and help each
other, or wave their hands explaining their latest idea.

In any other field, most projects being conducted in these places
would be an art, a craft or a hobby. But hacker space projects tend to
float between all of those labels. One person works on wiring San
Francisco's public transport notification system into Noisebridge's
audio, so late-night hackers can hear when the next train is due. In
New York, coders have worked with knitting and textile enthusiasts to
see if there's a potential crossover in their two worlds. Tutorials at
Noisebridge include lessons in "processing", the computer language
used by modern artists to built interactive works, and hacking the
Arduino - a hardware platform used by artists and roboticists alike.

None of these ideas are intended to make money. Indeed, hacker spaces
are supposed to take some of the pressure away from the money-grabbing
pursuits of the wider Silicon Valley world. There's a cheap "starving
hacker" rate at Noisebridge for those who don't have much cash; the
hardware is mostly donated.

The return of the hacker spaces may be a sign that the brightest minds
in America's tech community are preparing for their cyclical
hibernation - in a week where Yahoo has shed 10 per cent of its
employees, and there are more shutdowns than start-ups, places like
Noisebridge and NYC Resistor look like refuges.

Not that anyone here views them in such a negative light. Dozens have
signed up to be members of Noisebridge, and the community has enough
regular dues to pay its high San Francisco rental costs. Despite being
the initiator of so many tech innovations, the city has never had an
open hacker space, and the excitement around the arrival of
Noisebridge is high.

The European hacker space movement is also experiencing a revival.
After losing one of its key Dutch collectives, ASCII, in 2006, dozens
are now springing up across the continent.

Which leaves the obvious gap in this transatlantic movement: is there
room for an Irish hacker space? With Dublin real estate prices, unless
someone fancies an old-fashioned squat, perhaps not. But European
hacker spaces haven't turned away indirect government funding in the
form of arts grants and a space doesn't have to sit in the most
expensive urban environment. Anywhere with a fast internet pipe will
do.

If the Government wants to inspire some forward-thinking development
work by the next generation of Irish students, it might do well to
seed a couple of grungy looking spaces with a sound system and a few
LCD screens donated from a Department of Enterprise, Trade and
Employment spring clean.

It might be the cheapest way to come out of this downturn with a few
bright ideas.



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