Routine could be monotonous, but hackerspaces weren’t. Academic and career structures strangled the life out of me, but hackerspaces allowed my mind to roam and renewed the easily dissipating belief that I live in an interesting world. Academia and jobs were sterile, performance-based, angry, ruthless severe hard places where I’d have to assume a false identity to reflect the organization in the way it demands to be represented. If I had somehow failed to conform to a job or school’s standards, I am ostracized. Hackerpsaces were a place to breathe and let go of that false image of being industrial and “put together”, and just free to explore science and innovation without rigid social constraints. I could come in with ordinarily unacceptable tattoos and wear red ribbons on my hair in these spaces, at hackerspaces I’d be judged by my work rather than the social image and pedigreed. Being intellectually curious and image-consious, you’d assume that the world I belong to is in Academia, but I was never as free to let my mind roam and discover as I did in SF Hackerspaces. The best innovators do not come from academia, they come from space where there is no pressure to conform.
I belong to a group of innovators. I am lofty, and I doubt I will succeed but I have always been drawn to people who broke the status quo. Hackerspaces were the world of Aaron Tarwick, a biohacker and transhumanist who injected an HIV virus into himself to prove that his HIV-treatment will solve the unsolvable virus . The world of Aaron Swartz, who while is scorn of academia, made tremendous contributions to the accessibility of research papers. Those accessible research papers, while punished severely under intellectual property laws, were used by Jack Andraka, 15 year old who made considerably more cost efficient cancer diagnosis tools than the other famous and well-funded biotech company Theranos. Or the internet pirate queen, Alexandra Elbakya who made news headlines by establishing Scihub for research papers. While condemned for the legalities of these actions, she is toasted by innovators world wide for her contribution to the accessibility of research journals. All of these people believed in the accessibility of information, because of its role to push technology and medicine to new limits if given the opportunity. While it is important to keep my works legal, I would be beyond delighted to join their ranks as an aspiring science communicator. Joining their ranks breathes life into me in a way that the acceptable pursuit of prestige and respect does not.
There are internet white hats, transhumanist, and longevity activist. An incredibly interesting underground world that, in a short word can be described as unconventional. While the movement may consist of intellectually driven people, it does not have the same rigidity and absurd acceptance hurdle academia has. Simply contributing and participating in activities, qualified someone to gain acceptance. People would teach coding, share mathematical absurdities like the “hairy ball theorem”, and just crack jokes. Be casual. Unlike a well respected academia setting, unconventional underground spaces allowed you to “be yourself”. There is no penalty for cursing, or legal worries about much of anything. The best part is being part of the community does require someone to go to a prestigious school, or have a number of respectable statuses put in place. You could be unemployed, or flunking out of school, suffering from terminal, immunal, or chronic illness, and so long as you are intellectually driven and a contributor, you were a hacker. What other structured academic organization could offer the same? I think that is why some people like me may feel more as a part of unconventional groups like this than a more structured organization. Our sense of belonging isn’t as conditional as it is in universities or companies where you are only accepted based on performance.
Being in an academic environment, there was a sense of feeling disposable. When an institute’s funding is based on the amount of research it could produce, it could feel like a more competitive environment than a collaborative one. There is always going to be another bright-eyed student to replace someone more brilliant, productive, industrious, and conscientious. In addition, it was hard to feel as though anything done had a lasting impact, given that the friends and colleagues made would simply leave the moment their time at a university is finished. Any unfinished project is just doomed to stay unfinished. But spaces where there isn’t a structure, or that one was replaceable. Acquiring knowledge, tinkering with electronics and code, was somehow more enjoyable when it did not have to produce economic or academic results. It is like a forgotten feeling of pursuing knowledge, and being part of a community because it was enjoyable and spontaneous. People at hackerspaces did not have to manage
Innovative people are attracted to hackerspaces. At hackerspaces a person’s worth is not based on social status or forgettable pedigrees, it is based on what a person could reasonably contribute to a community. The spaces do not accept members based on performance or economic status, rather their ability to innovate and tinker. And spaces are not afraid to challenge the status quo, and to believe in accessibility of information. If academia seeks to attract the movers and shakers of the upcoming technological and medical revolution, it may be missing key qualities hackerspaces have and academia doesn’t: acceptance and collaboration among the intellectually driven.
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Noisebridge San Francisco Links:
https://www.meetup.com/noisebridge/
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge
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