
Michel Lallement: “At Noisebridge, he who does is legit” - ValentineC
http://www.makery.info/2015/05/04/michel-lallement-a-noisebridge-est-legitime-celui-qui-fait/?lang=en
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calibraxis
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.

~~~
hoopd
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.

~~~
johnmaguire2013
"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.)

~~~
hoopd
Not everything has to be a "but the conservatives are worse!" Even if they
are, it's no excuse.

I don't know the individuals from the article but I've witnessed what he's
talking about and I think he described it accurately.

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rsync
"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”."

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spiritplumber
Hooray for healthy communities. I've been to Noisebridge a couple of times,
and it reminded me of the workshops in Discworld...

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ZanyProgrammer
I visited Noisebridge back in 2013, and I thought it was nasty and dirty
(maybe to get that authentic urban vibe?).

I'd much prefer HackerDojo, at least there you can go pee and not have to
worry about leaving your stuff.

Also, I read enough about their problems with drug use and the homeless who
lived there, that I'd rather just not go back.

~~~
geoelectric
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.

~~~
Animats
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.

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eryman
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.

