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.

In the absence of reality-bending quantum effects, I’m going to slap together a collection of links and brief anecdotes in order to try to keep up my regular posting schedule. Consider this my “really coming into his own as a blogger” post.

Tonight You Belong to Me (ukulele cover) from buriednexttoyou on Vimeo.

Dave Hoffman is awesome and much better at the ukulele than I am—I am still working on it. He’s also not bad at harmonizing with his evil doppelgänger (you can tell the evil one by the beard). I’ve been looking for a good excuse to link to him for some time now, and I’ve decided if there’s one thing this blog is sorely lacking, it’s ukulele musical interludes. That’s as good a reason as any. Anyone who enjoys eccentricity in their creativity should check out his site.

Image courtesy i-hacked.com

In other internet-news, pranksters have been reprogramming digital highway signs to say awesome things like, “Zombies Ahead” instead of really useful things like “Drunk Driving Kills”. I hesitate to call what they’re doing hacking, because according to the instructions, the technical skills required are mainly opening unlocked panels, typing, and running away from cops. Nevertheless, it’s still pretty funny. The first person to throw up a clever XKCD reference will likely be acclaimed Pope of the Internet. I predict a severe law enforcement overreaction in the near future (1-31-07: Never Forget).

Speaking of inappropriate invocations of terrorism, on the Copenhagen metro today I noticed a ten- or eleven-year old boy wearing a ski cap emblazoned with, “Ground Zero: 9-11-01 NYC”
My thoughts went as follows:

1. What the heck? How dare that little Danish kid wear that hat? Doesn’t he realize how offensive that is?
2. Wait, I guarantee he bought that hat at ground zero in New York City and some soulless American huckster was the one who produced and sold it. My country makes me sad.
3. On the other hand, I’ll bet the terrorists didn’t bank on that one. Blow up our buildings, and we’ll just shamelessly sell merchandise for the mass-murder site. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot steal the dint of American commercialism. Take that, Al Qaeda.

Although it hasn’t been abundantly clear in the blog, I’ve been in Copenhagen, Denmark for the past few days. Today, I needed to catch a train back across the river to meet with one of the Swedish hackers in Malmö.

At the train station, I waited in a really long line signed “International Tickets” only to get to the front of the line and be told, “Sorry, Malmö counts as domestic. You need to go wait in that other, even longer line.” I was like, “Excuse me? I think the nation of Sweden would beg to differ. If I have to change currencies to go there, you should sell me a ticket.” She refused to budge, and I wound up waiting in the Domestic Tickets (and Malmö!) line.

Malmö actually did belong to Denmark in the past, but they lost it in the 1658 Treaty of Roskilde. Then in 1677, they wasted 14,000 troops trying to take it back. I have to say, I think it’s time for Denmark to let it go. Their current strategy to covertly reclaim Malmö for the Danish through ticket-counter shenanigans is simply impractical.