[wordup] Hackers Space: The Final Frontier

[Adam Shand]

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.