Without a Traceroute

I’ve been invited to be a guest blogger at hackerspaces.org. They’re a cool bunch of people, based out of Vienna, where I met some of them. The site is an attempt to maintain an up-to-date database of hackerspaces worldwide and provide resources for those running hackerspaces or interested in starting their own hackerspaces.

It’s a pretty cool opportunity, and I’m excited. The hackerspaces.org people’s interests dovetail very well with the focus of my project. If you’re interested, you can read my introductory post, although if you’ve been following this blog regularly, it will contain approximately zero new information for you.

I should say, however, that I’m not entirely without reservations. One of the big goals of the Watson Fellowship is to promote independence. To that end, I’m not supposed to be affiliated with any academic institution, take any paid jobs, or even structured volunteer posts. I don’t feel like unpaid blogging falls into any of the verboten categories (especially since I’ve already been writing about my experiences). But I am a little bit concerned that even being tangentially associated with hackerspaces.org could compromise that independence.

As far as I can tell, hackerspaces.org is mostly viewed in a positive light in the hacker community, but it’s not entirely uncontroversial. There are some hackers who instinctively resist any form of listing, categorization and public exposure. There are others who essentially agree with the site’s mission, but criticize it for promoting what they see as a one-size-fits-all approach to hacker spaces (“This is how you make a hacklab”). I’ve also heard grumbling about a supposed Amero-centrism, which I find sort of ironic given that they’re based in Austria. It is fair to point out that many of the most active participants on the hackerspaces.org conference calls came from American hacker spaces. Monopolizing conversations is kind of an American specialty, apparently.

I’m sure that blogging for hackerspaces.org will be a great chance to get in touch with more hackerspaces and meet more interesting individuals. At the same time, there could be a tradeoff where people who don’t like hackerspaces.org are less willing to talk to me. Basically, I want to make sure I can approach the people I meet as myself, an individual, and not as a representative of, or a traveling envoy from, hackerspaces.org.