One possible confusion: "libertarian" clearly here means "anarchist", which is different from the common US meaning. (Most of the world uses anarchist in its historic meaning, which predates the US right wing coopting the term.)
> "One young guy who made a big mistake had been expelled from the space. To keep him from returning, there was a poster with a big photo of him : “If you see him come back, throw him out.” It’s extremely violent. From planet France, we tell ourselves that we would never do that in organizations or associations. Bay Area hackers are unflexible about certain rules, such as sexual harassment, for example."
I hope I misunderstand this. His version of "French" culture sounds like savagery. I'll pass this to my French friends for their insights.
From Noisebridge's rules: "Noisebridge is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, housing status, or language."[1] That's very San Francisco. French culture is much more judgmental.
Being a French sociologist he would probably find the U.S.'s definitions of anarchism and libertarianism a bit quaint :)
It sounds like his version of French culture is less savage? He was saying he found the American hackerspace to be extremely violent. It's no surprise he feels this way, some radical lefties feel it's important to make examples of people for breaking social norms to the extent of running people out of town. I've also seen social punishments for not participating in ostracizing the wrongdoer, like if you don't help shame them maybe you don't value your place in the community.
"radical lefties"? Sure, I'm sure there are some "radical lefties" that feel "it's important to make examples of people for breaking social norms."
But that's definitely more characteristic of the (far) right. Being more conservative, those conservative ideals are enforced through social norms (i.e. excluding those who don't fit their views of what's normal -- think of LGBT kids kicked out to the street, for example.)
Why would I get downvoted here? I'm not the one who described the social structure of the hackerspace as 'extremely violent.' It was the professional sociologist who said that. I'm just trying to help people understand why he might feel that way.
... a French anarcho-communist, to describe, himself.
It's important to note, that the US is the exception to the rule here. But even within the US, Noam Chomsky, the worlds most cited intellectual quantified by the post-enlightenment journal system, self-describes as a libertarian socialist. And there's no doubt that he is on the left.
I think it's use in the US is a product of the fact there is no Labor / Socialist party that is the main center left party. So the Democrats are "Liberals" and a word had to be used for those who were on the right, but liberal.
I think the modern, US-centered, use of Libertarian for "conservative economics, socially liberal" can be dated "post-Regan" if I'm not mistaken?
"Noisebridge is one of the first, which spread its ideals and inspired the other Bay Area hackerspaces."
It's worth remembering the cDc/l0pht affiliated "New Hack City", circa 2000-2002.
Hard to believe, but it was a hackerspace right in the city center / financial district of SF ... "just down Market street under the “We Buy Diamonds” awning, only evidenced by a buzzer button labelled “SETEC Astronomy”."
I was an active member of Hacker Dojo for the first several years. When it was still open to the public 24/7, we had a lot of the same problems. People do what they have to do to survive, and passing up a free roof wouldn't make a ton of sense. Figuring out respectful disincentives to that (or locking the doors, take your pick) goes with the territory.
And stuff did get stolen. We even had a rule that if you left things at the Dojo and they weren't obviously part of the facilities they were fair game to use, hack with, destroy, take home, whatever, just to set the expectation that there was no security (and to limit the whole "not sure if I can hack this thing" mentality). The high point on that was when some dude had a pretty nice position-tracking VR setup running on Windows staged in one of our large meeting rooms (he was one of the exceptions allowed since it was really, really neat) and the local BSD user group helpfully reformatted his boxes to FreeBSD for him. He was kind of pissed.
I don't think the Dojo was ever particularly comparable to Noisebridge, though, for better or for worse. I guess the Dojo was closer to a hackerspace than most other things you could call it, so it was as good a name as any. But the Dojo was more like a community center that had, as one of its facets, a hackerspace. Most of the people there were self-incubating startups or coworkers, not really people doing the kind of open, collaborative work that typifies other spaces. We had a community of people who were more like that, but it was a subset, not the place itself. Nowadays, the balance has tipped even more, and the coworking aspect is even stronger. At the point I left, at least, most of the classic hackerspace aspect had taken a real back seat.
Noisebridge, for all its warts, is something pretty special IMO.
He's right, and it's sad. Hacker Dojo today is a big room with bright industrial lighting in which people slave on laptops in silence. Under the new management, the lounge has been converted to a more upscale room with office cubicles for rent. Parking is now restricted to paid members during the day.
They have a shop workspace of sorts, but it's not used much any more.
The article doesn't mention TechShop at all. TechShop is still around, with three Bay Area locations. San Jose is in great shape, SF is in good shape, and the mid-peninsula location moved twice and lost members due to downtime. TechShop runs corporate team-building exercises for big companies; I've seen Google, Facebook, and Singularity University take over the space, pushing the paying members out. The big tools (laser cutters, water jets, CNC milling machines) are great, and I've used almost all of them. Not much social activity any more. There used to be Friday night events, but that died out.
Sadly, HackerDojo has lost its hackerspace feel, and it's much more of a normal startup incubator.
I attended both regularly in 2011-2012, and while my group of awesome friends formed from a kernel of folks from Hackerdojo, I much preferred Noisebridge's ambiance. It had more of San Francisco's zany vibe (including, to be fair, the occasional hobo), whereas Hackerdojo took itself somewhat more seriously as a sort-of-incubator in the heart of the Silicon Valley. The fact that HD's original digs was litterally a block away from Y-combinator contributed a lot to that.
One of the last times I was in Hackerdojo was when our group of friends painted the dinosaur mural in their new space (I'm still annoyed that the person who painted to book spines messed some up. No Bugsby, that messed-up K&R cover sucks :p). Nowadays, it's basically just a coworking space for stressed 20-somethings working on their startup idea. The guy who had put the arduino-etc vending machine recently took it back out.
Looking at the hacker community in San Francisco from the perspective of someone immersed in the tiny technology community in Hollywood it still looks like a bunch of terrified little brothers afraid to face the real world, the entertainment industry.
> "One young guy who made a big mistake had been expelled from the space. To keep him from returning, there was a poster with a big photo of him : “If you see him come back, throw him out.” It’s extremely violent. From planet France, we tell ourselves that we would never do that in organizations or associations. Bay Area hackers are unflexible about certain rules, such as sexual harassment, for example."
I hope I misunderstand this. His version of "French" culture sounds like savagery. I'll pass this to my French friends for their insights.