Hackerspaces - What's It Really About

hackerspaces what's it really about everybody knows about hackerspaces at least everyone in this room i bet you can explain what a hackerspace is A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. A hackerspace can be viewed as okay we've all read / heard / said that at least a million times but what does it mean? what's _really_ going on? what's _really_ happening? what's the _essence_ of a hackerspace? take few seconds how are you going to explain _that_ to someone? the thing is if you really think about it you cannot explain a hackerspace you have to experience it yadda yadda yadda how does it work? it's so intense! hold on. #$%@ rainbows... kitchen chillout work[0] work[1] work[2] server plotter weltherrschaftszentrale microcontrollerforum work[3] work[4] work[5] work[6] longcat portal ceilingcat mate source the location - geocache entry hint: it's square and binary initial idea random line noise^W^W^W perl failure new idea, rinse, repeat patterns! - "we need evil villan HQ industrial flair!" my $z = "\e[47m \e[40m"; my $o = " "; my $s = ${z}x29; print "$s\n$s\n"; for(my $i=0; $i<length($t); $i+=25){ my $l = substr($t,$i,25); $l =~ s/1/$o/g; $l =~ s/0/$z/g; print "$z$z$l$z$z\n"; } print "$s\n$s\n"; so what is the essence of a hackerspace like shackspace? bootstrapping ideas taking shortscuts taking detours all the while: having fun working together $t=q$1111111011110100101111111100000100001110000100000110111010010101000010111011011101000110111101011101101110100011100000101110110000010010101101010000011111111010101010101111111000000001100111010000000011011010010010010010000011100100010100001100011000111101111100111101101111101110001100000101111001111011001001100111011000010000010001010101101011101000101111110000111011111010110010010001111001110101010001100011100011111010100000000110100001000111001111111000101110101011011100000100011010010001000110111010100101011111110111011101011101101101101011101110100011010110001111110000010111111010111001111111111011111101111100001$; here's one solution three hours later moar awesome! $m = sub { { 0 => "\e[47m \e[40m", 1 => " ", 2 => $/ }->{$_[0]} || join undef,(("\e[47m \e[40m"x58,$/)x2) }; $_ = join sub { for(my $i=0; $i<length($_[0]); $i+=30){ substr $_[0], $i, 25, join substr($_[0],$i,25), qw/00 002/; } $_[0]; }->($t), qw/5 4/; s/(.)/$m->($1)/eg; print; what's the essence of a hackerspace? bootstrapping ideas into reality right away instant gratification for the creative mind - "every chillout lounge needs a back-lit Beck's fridge!" empty Beck's bottle some left-over wire desk lamp washing machine - "a back-lit, slowly rotating fan." magically materialized fan old traffic light high-voltage capacitor scrapyard power supply we're in your context screwing with your mind