[Noisebridge-discuss] Sigh -- I'm not helping with Maker Faires this year.

[Jacob Appelbaum]

On 04/04/2012 11:22 AM, VonGuard wrote:
> I agree Martin.
> 
> I think it's rather silly to stay out of Maker Faire for the reasons
> stated. 

No, it's not. It's pretty awesome that Mitch and others are so
principled that they've sacrificed their own standing for little more
than a dialog. That is not only not silly, it's really humbling.

> Anyone boycotting because of this funding should really stop using
> computers, and never use any technology out of MIT or CMU. ARPANET, which
> became the Internet, was a military funded project. And MIT and CMU both
> take huge amounts of DARPA money. Remember the self-driving car challenge?
> 

That kind of over simplification is ridiculous and does not help to
discuss the current concerns with DARPA, the U.S. military or any other
issues that Mitch raised.

> Frankly, I'm happy our tax dollars are coming back to us in some way, no
> matter how they get there. It's better than the government spending it on
> its favorite overseas pass-time: killing brown people.

It seems foolish to think that this is actually disconnected from
killing people when one of the main projects involved is a military
transport. I assume everyone has read the storify[0] link on the topic
but if not, I think the part about MENTOR is worth reading:


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But... Keep the following in mind...DARPA defined MENTOR's overall
mission, in 2010 (emphasis added), this way:

"MENTOR is part of DARPA’s Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) program, a larger
effort to dramatically compress development timelines for future defense
vehicles, shift the product value chain toward high valueadded design
activities and democratize the innovation process. AVM seeks a
“fab-less” approach to design of correct-by-construction
cyber-electro-mechanical systems, a foundry-style bitstream programmable
manufacturing capability and a crowd-sourcing infrastructure for
development of vehicle systems similar to open-source software today."

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So it's true - our tax dollars are coming back to us - now we should ask
ourselves - is THAT what we want to be doing with them? Is that what we
want to teach our children to do and to think is a good idea?

Perhaps? Perhaps not? That's the point of the discussion. This non-sense
about not using the internet is silly. I think the best email on the
topic so far is by Michael Prados and I think it sounds very similar to
how many of us actually feel as pragmatists. I encourage everyone to
read his email and to consider his well written thoughts on the matter:
https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2012-April/029840.html

All the best,
Jake

[0] http://storify.com/demilit/darpa-and-make-round-up