Without a Traceroute

Way to be late to the party, guys. The world’s least cutting-edge tech media source, Wired, has a decent overview of the hackerspace scene as it exists today in the United States, which this morning made the front page at Digg. I don’t have any major bones to pick with the article, except for the general tone that “Hey, this scene didn’t really matter until it started happening in the United States!”

There’s some acknowledgment of German and Austrian hackerspaces, but we get sentences like, “German and Austrian hackers have been organizing into hacker collectives for years, including Metalab in Vienna, c-base in Berlin and the Chaos Computer Club in Hannover, Germany”

The author of this article is lumping together Metalab, founded in 2006, c-base, founded circa 1995, and CCC, founded 1981(ish?) as though they’re all similar sorts of places. Metalab is relatively recent and operates on a model very much like the American hackerspaces: it’s a platform, with dues-paying members and resources for projects, but nothing in the way of its own agenda or ideology. c-base is much older, predating the late 90s tech boom, and with a great deal in the way of history and self-created mythos surrounding it. CCC predates even the World Wide Web, transcends any one specific location or space (with chapters active in several German cities) and probably belongs alongside institutions like 2600 as founding members of the 1980s hacker culture.

It’s great to see hackerspaces getting mainstream exposure, but it would also be nice to see more recognition of the long history and broad geographic reach of the scene. Say, for starters, a specific mention of any hackerspace outside of the United States, Germany, or Austria. I’ve definitely encountered grumbling from some European hackers about the US-centric nature of coverage of hackerspaces, or of groups (hackerspaces.org sometimes included) pushing an “American” model for hackerspaces. This model includes a rented or purchased space, relatively expensive membership dues (Wired quotes $40 per month as the “starving hacker rate” at Noisebridge, while some of the more anarchist European hackerspaces either have no “members” at all, or charge dues on the order of €15 per year) and fancy equipment (NYC Resistor has their own high-powered laser cutter—which is, admittedly, totally awesome).

I realize that Wired is a US-based media source, so it makes sense that they’d go to American hackerspaces to do interviews and get quotes. I guess it’s just that, as an American traveling abroad, I’m quite sensitive about trying not to fall into the American stereotype of bungling into a situation I don’t understand, and telling people to do it my way. Americans are very much latecomers to the hackerspace scene. In fact, even at the point when I was first proposing this project, in late 2007, most of the American hackerspaces mentioned in the Wired article did not exist yet. During one of my Watson interviews, I was asked, “Why do you need to leave the United States to do this project?” and I answered (at the time, honestly) “Because the kinds of places that I want to visit simply are not in America.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to see these types of places springing up across my home country, I just think the Americans would do well to remember that they are essentially re-inventing wheel, here.

EDIT: Also, since this is pretty much the first time I’ve ever specifically written about hackerspaces in the United States, I think it’s appropriate to throw out a plug for the newly-founded Pumping Station One, in my hometown of Chicago. My friend Dave recently interviewed Eric Michaud, one of the founders.

On Saturday, I went to see the DDR Museum in Berlin (a terrible example of an historical abbreviation striking mental miscues). I had originally been planning on seeing the Deutsches Technikmuseum instead, but it occurred to me that I’ve seen a couple other technical museums on this trip (most notably in Zagreb). While the one in Berlin is reportedly very nice, it probably doesn’t offer anything unique. The DDR Museum, on the other hand, is the only one of its kind and explores a subject particular to East Germany.

The museum, for its part, turned out to be pretty interesting. So many museums are focused on “important” things: epoch-shaping wars, timeless art, science−it was cool to see one devoted simply to daily life in the DDR. The tone of the museum reminded me a little bit of the charming comedy Good Bye, Lenin, a sort of bemused appreciation for communist kitsch, but with recognition of the negative aspects as well. I learned a bunch of things I never knew about East Germany.

Living room in the DDR

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I’m in Berlin now, again.  I like this city, and I’m starting to know my way around since I keep winding up here. Unfortunately, it’s freezing cold. Berlin is about 400 kilometers almost due south of Copenhagen, but it sure doesn’t feel it.

I killed myself getting over from Malmo to Copenhagen to try to catch a bus, and I managed to miss it by 5 minutes! Even more gallingly, I discovered that the same bus actually passes through Malmo on its way to Copenhagen. Epic Brendan Bus Fail.

Luckily, the bus stop was right next to the train station, and there was a train to Berlin for only about €5 more than the bus.

So that’s the unromantic logistics of my life. I also interviewed one of the guys from The Research Department, and I need to write that up for the hackerspaces blog. In Denmark, I hung out a bunch in Freetown Christiania, which is probably the coolest thing I saw in Copenhagen. It’s certainly worthy of its own post, when  I get a chance. Things keep happening, though.

Tonight, I’m supposed to be going to some party/art exhibition thing with one of the girls I met in Ljubljana on the Pirate Bay bus. I guess some of the Pirate Bay/Piratbyrån people are going to be there/presenting an exhibit there. If it sounds like I’m vague on the details, that’s because I am. I’m also hoping to get up early tomorrow to check out the Technical Museum here in Berlin, which I missed last time.

Ok, well, not really. For most people, it was probably kind of terrible, what with the entire global economy teetering on the verge of collapse and everything. I am sympathetic, and if 2008 was a crap year for you, at least you can take comfort in the fact that 2009 will might suck less.

But what’s the point of having your own blog if you can’t be totally navel-gazing, indulgent and self-centered? This is the time of year when every media outlet on the planet publishes a year-in-review piece. So here goes: this was a sweet year for me—graduating, getting the Watson, all the campaigning paying off with Obama’s election, driving and camping down the Baja peninsula in Mexico for spring break. I hope next year lives up.

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Another historic first from 25C3, the first-ever (confirmed) Dual Dunkin’ Donuts Distributed Denial of Service (DDDDDoS) attack.

Two Dunkin’ Donuts stores near the conference center in Alexanderplatz were simultaneously flashmobbed by hundreds of hackers, temporarily interrupting normal donut delivery. It would appear that the stores did not have adequate caching implemented, although local mirrors were available.

Happy New Year’s, everyone!

Photos and video courtesy the 25C3 wiki: