從實踐中體現：匯聚而生一個多元文化「Hackerspace」社群 - 政大學術集成

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(1)International Master’s Program in International Communications Studies College of Communication National Chengchi University. Master’s 治 Thesis. 立. 政. 大. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. Hackerspace. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. Embodied in Practice: The Emergence of a Multicultural Hackerspace Community. Ch. engchi. i n U. Student: Eli Kao Advisor: Professor Se-Wen Sun. 103 July 2014. 7. v.

(2) Hackerspace Embodied in Practice: The Emergence of a Multicultural Hackerspace Community. Student: Eli Kao Advisor: Professor Se-Wen Sun. 政治大. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. i n U. C. v. e n g c h ito the ThesishSubmitted International Master’s Program in International Communications Studies National Chengchi University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. 103 July 2014. 7.

(3) Abstract Hackerspaces are open and public workshops where participants pro-actively engage with technology in a social context. From origins in 1990s Germany, the global propagation of hackerspaces has been grassroots, decentralized, and extra-institutional. How does a new hackerspace emerge? What are some key social processes at work within a hackerspace and how are they conditioned by a multilingual, multicultural setting? What roles do values and ideology play? The present study addresses these questions through immersion in the social. 政治大 were analyzed using grounded theory techniques. The results emphasize that initial 立. world of a hackerspace in Taipei, Taiwan. Participant observation and in-depth interview data. ‧ 國. 學. organizing depends on catalysts and relevant prior experience may be crucial. Local conditions in the form of a multicultural, multilingual environment are shown to affect social. ‧. processes, sometimes as a source of friction. Ideological and political concerns do not seem. sit. y. Nat. salient to Taipei Hackerspace participants generally, though values implicit in practices. io. al. er. present alternatives to institutional conventions. In addition, four primary processes are. v. n. proposed: “Project-ing,” Sharing, “Making it one’s own,” and Negotiating. Finally, support is. Ch. engchi. i n U. given to the concept of a transferable hackerspace model that is adapted to local conditions. The values and principles observed—sharing and openness norms, “do-ocracy”, ad hoc organizing, resistance to rules and hierarchy—can be traced to various influences in hackerspaces’ historical development, particularly the open source movement, and serve to optimize hacking potential while fostering a heterogeneous community network.. Keywords: hacker, hackerspace, community, technology, open source, learning, education, multicultural, intercultural, grounded theory, social processes, Taiwan..

(4) Acknowledgements I would like to first express my gratitude to my thesis advisor Professor Se-Wen Sun for her wisdom, patience, and encouragement throughout the research process. I would also like to thank Professor Barry Shiaw-Chian Fong and Professor Wen-Ying Liu for their valuable time, guidance, and support. All of the IMICS professors, my fellow IMICS classmates, as well as the department administrative staff, provided crucial and much appreciated encouragement. Of course, this study would not have been possible without the cooperation. 政治大 particular, I am indebted to those who gave generously of their time to participate in 立 of those at the Taipei Hackerspace, and I would like to thank everyone involved. In. ‧ 國. 學. interviews with me. I am also blessed to have great friends and extended family and am very thankful for their care and camaraderie. I especially want to thank C.W. for her moral support. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. love and support.. ‧. and companionship. Finally, I am grateful always to my dear parents and brother for their. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(5) Table of Contents ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................... i! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii! LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... v! LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... vi! PREFACE ..................................................................................................................................... vii!. 政治大 Notes on Terminology ............................................................................................................... ix! 立. Setting the Stage: A Dynamic, Heterogeneous Network .......................................................... vii!. ‧ 國. 學. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1! LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................................... 8!. ‧. The Hackerspace Model and its Social and Historical Context .................................................. 8!. Nat. io. sit. y. Hackerspace Interactions & Processes...................................................................................... 33!. er. RESEARCH QUESTIONS .......................................................................................................... 49!. al. n. v i n Ch METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................................... 51! engchi U Restatement of Research Objective and Overview of Methodology ........................................ 51!. Data Collection ......................................................................................................................... 59! Rigor & Credibility ................................................................................................................... 65! Data Management ..................................................................................................................... 67! Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 68! RESULTS ..................................................................................................................................... 77! RQ1) Through What Processes Did the Taipei Hackerspace Emerge? .................................... 77!. iii.

(6) RQ2) How Do the Local Conditions in Taipei, Taiwan, Affect the Organizing of a Hackerspace? ................................................................................................................... 89! RQ3) Are Any Ideological Elements from Hackerspaces’ General Development Incorporated within Local Practice?................................................................................ 98! RQ4) What Are the Key Community Dynamics and Processes? ........................................... 109! Project-ing: An Ad Hoc Organizing and Meaning-producing Process ............................. 110! Sharing: A Norm with Diverse Expressions and Interpretations ....................................... 121! “Making It One’s Own”: Domesticity and Participation ................................................... 129! Negotiating: Meaning & Individual/Collective Tension. .................................................. 137!. 政治大 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................. 157! 立. ‧ 國. 學. Key Findings in Context ......................................................................................................... 158! Future Studies ......................................................................................................................... 170!. ‧. Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 173!. Nat. sit. y. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 175!. er. io. BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 181!. al. n. v i n APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 197! Ch engchi U Appendix A: The Arduino Microcontroller ............................................................................ 197! Appendix B: Interview Guide ................................................................................................. 199! Appendix C: The Facebook “Like” Counter .......................................................................... 201! Appendix D: Initial Categories and Codes after Phase 1 Data Coding .................................. 204! Appendix E: Refined Categories and Codes after Phase 1 & 2 Data Coding......................... 206! Appendix F: Intermediate, Axial Coding Chart...................................................................... 208! Appendix G: The Four Primary Categories with Linking Interactions .................................. 214!. iv.

(7) List of Tables Table 1. Data Collection ..........................................................................................................60! Table 2. Participant Observation Instances (Coded)................................................................61! Table 3. In-depth Interviews ....................................................................................................63! Table 4. Initial, Open Coding Example ...................................................................................69! Table 5. Coding Example after Phase 2 Data Collection.........................................................70! Table 6. Memoing Example.....................................................................................................73!. 政治大. Table 7. Timeline of Initial Organizing ...................................................................................79!. 立. Table 8. Project-ing: Properties, Dimensions, and Sub-categories ........................................111!. ‧ 國. 學. Table 9. Sharing: Properties, Dimensions, and Sub-categories .............................................123! Table 10. "Making It One's Own": Properties, Dimensions, and Sub-categories..................131!. ‧. Table 11. Negotiating: Properties, Dimensions, and Sub-categories ....................................140!. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. v. i n U. v.

(8) List of Figures Figure 1. Approximately 1,000 hackerspaces in nearly 90 countries listed on Hackerspaces.org. ..............................................................................................................3! Figure 2. A diverse set of values and influences. ....................................................................20! Figure 3. Coding & analysis process. ......................................................................................56! Figure 4. Intermediate, axial coding ........................................................................................73! Figure 5. Sorting & mapping ...................................................................................................75!. 政治大. Figure 6. Initial organizing process. ........................................................................................80!. 立. Figure 7. The Project-ing process. .........................................................................................111!. ‧ 國. 學. Figure 8. The Sharing process. ..............................................................................................122! Figure 9. The "Making it one's own" process ........................................................................130!. ‧. Figure 10. The Negotiating process. ......................................................................................139!. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(9) Preface Setting the Stage: A Dynamic, Heterogeneous Network Within the spacious, light-filled conference room high above Taipei a crowd expectantly milled about. Both Mandarin and English could be heard as people chatted in small groups. The attendees had gathered for the “Taipei Hackerspace Mini Faire.” It was the first public event for the nascent hackerspace. People had come for a variety of reasons: some were already familiar with the concept of hackerspaces and were eager to join, some were. 政治大. curious to learn more after coming across the event information online, some were vendors. 立. seeking to publicize their wares, some were volunteers recruited to help, and one couple later. ‧ 國. 學. confided to me that initially they simply wanted to see the office space. I had decided that a hackerspace would be the topic of my thesis research and was there to participate and take. ‧. sit. Nat. become friends and core participants at the Taipei Hackerspace.. y. notes. Though still strangers then, among the group that day were many who would go on to. n. al. er. io. One of the organizers, an American working for the company whose offices we. i n U. v. occupied, walked to a podium and welcomed people. He spoke briefly, giving an introduction. Ch. engchi. to hackerspaces and explaining the day’s activities. Live videochats with U.S. hackers had been arranged and, beaming in from San Francisco, hacker and activist Mitch Altman shared his vision of hackerspaces, saying, “it’s in our DNA; we need community” and “when you do what you love, magic happens.” Others from the U.S. hackerspace community addressed the crowd as well, thereby framing what was happening in Taipei within an international network. It was unclear whether the majority of Taiwanese attendees could follow everything that was said, and perhaps this was one reason the crowd’s attention eventually wandered. Free, open workshops followed, with topics including soldering LED lights, programming an open source microcontroller, and “hacking” clothes. Instruction was largely ad hoc: at the vii.

(10) soldering table those who had just learned taught the newest arrivals, and two high-schoolers came to my aid as I attempted to make sense of a programming interface. The two primary organizers and co-founders later told me that organizing the Mini Faire itself, arranging the workshops and speakers, was last minute and largely ad hoc. It was, however, also a success. Those who were excited by the project stayed in touch and went on to launch the open and public workshop that is the Taipei Hackerspace. From the initial trajectory established at the Mini Faire, the past year has seen the Taipei Hackerspace change and evolve. It is a shape shifter, taking on a different character with the coming and going of different characters. It is a community where any number of. 治政大 collaboration is possible futures, including obsolescence, co-exists. In the meantime, 立. happening, projects are being done, identities are being redefined, and different values are. ‧ 國. 學. being negotiated.. ‧. My personal experience has been an exploration of the social world of the Taipei. sit. y. Nat. Hackerspace while wrestling with how to analyze a “moving target” that by its very nature. io. er. strongly resists unitary definition. I have also reconsidered my own biases, especially regarding ideological and political concerns, reaching a more nuanced appreciation of the. al. n. v i n diversity of subject positions withinC thehhackerspace. I have e n g c h i U also been inspired by the values. and practices of hackerspace participants. The hackerspace exists through the intersection of multiple processes, technologies, values, and subjects. It is highly dynamic and idiosyncratic, yet certain patterns can be discerned. By spending time with this community, listening to heterogeneous viewpoints, and reflecting and writing on this process, I hope I have also been able to responsibly give voice to participants as they work together and navigate these intersecting influences.. viii.

(11) Notes on Terminology Usage of “hack” and “hacker”. If the life of a sign is in its use, as Wittgenstein (1965) wrote, then it could be said that the terms “hack” and “hacker” lead a Jekyll and Hyde existence. The contemporary use and meaning of these words are seemingly conflicting: either positive, reflecting clever or creative problem solving and approaches to technology, or negative, in the sense of nefarious information theft or the sabotaging of network security. For those more familiar with hacker and hackerspace communities, this explanation may be unnecessary. I include this explanation here because of the strong negative associations that. 政治大 often used in the media. For those that are new to the topics discussed in this paper, I ask that 立 some people have developed with the words “hack” and “hackers” due to the way they are. ‧ 國. 學. you consider your understanding and use of these terms in light of the following clarification. Though the longstanding usages of “hack” as a verb meaning to cut something. ‧. irregularly or a noun describing an unqualified individual continue to apply, it is its. sit. y. Nat. contemporary use and corresponding technological and efficiency connotations that have led. io. er. it to be called “the word of the moment” (Yagoda, 2014). Its use in the context of technology. al. work can be traced to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s. According to. n. v i n C hRailroad Club in theUlate 1950s, from which some of the membership of MIT’s Tech Model engchi the earliest “hackers” emerged, “a project undertaken or a product built not solely to fulfill some constructive goal, but with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement, was called a ‘hack’” (Levy, 2010, p. 10). In his article “On Hacking”, the renowned MIT computer hacker and activist Richard M. Stallman (2002b) wrote that “hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness.” The contemporary usage of “hack” (both as a verb and a noun) can thus be traced back to the influential hacker milieu that emerged at MIT, where its connotations were primarily positive.. ix.

(12) More recently, a variant of the original use of “hack” has emerged in the popular consciousness. This interpretation focuses on clever, effort-saving measures and efficiency. For example, the popular website “Lifehacker.com” offers “Tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done” that range from technologically oriented (“Automate Your Window Blinds with an Arduino”) to the more mundane (“Six Different Ways to Cook the Perfect Fried Egg”) (Lifehacker, 2013). However, reality is complex and nuanced. The distinction between the positive and negative meanings of “hack” is not always so clearly drawn. A 1963 article in MIT’s student newspaper about students hacking the school’s telephone system is also an excellent. 治政 illustration of this point. The article was clear that some of大 the students’ hacking was illegal 立 and had inconvenienced the wider community, but also quoted a school administrator as. ‧ 國. 學. saying “we appreciate (the students’) curiosity” and a hacker who added that “The field is. ‧. always open to experimentation” (Lichstein, 1963). This early example therefore reveals the. sit. y. Nat. multi-faceted nature of the word “hack”: how the positive character of hacking as curiosity-. io. er. driven, playful experimentation can simultaneously lead to excursions outside the law and result in negative perceptions. However, it has been claimed that the negative associations of. al. n. v i n C h interpretation of U “hack” and “hacker” are based on media e n g c h i a small subset of “hacking” activity (Stallman, 2002b). Such use of the word “hacker” by the media and general public led. legendary hacker Richard Greenblatt to lament: “They stole our word and it’s irretrievably gone” (as quoted in Levy, 2010, p. 471). For the purposes of this study, a definition of “hack” and “hacker” more true to those MIT hackers and the original spirit of the word is the operational one. Therefore to “hack” is to do something, in a spirit of playfulness, cleverness, and exploration, which may or may not involve computer software and hardware. “Hackers” are those people who engage in such activities and identify with their engagement. x.

(13) Hackerspaces or makerspaces? “Hackerspaces”, most obviously through their name but also through their historical roots and development, are clearly identified with hackers. The spirit and activities of hackerspaces are an affirmation of the original meaning of the word “hacker” described above. As also indicated by the term itself, a hackerspace requires a physical space. According to a principal online site for sharing hackerspace information, hackerspaces are broadly defined as “community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects” (Hackerspaces.org, 2013). A researcher who has monitored the ongoing discussion within the hackerspace community regarding the definition of the term has stated that while there is not absolute consensus, common criteria have emerged:. 治政大 in a spirit of equality. Firstly, a hackerspace is owned and run by its members 立. Secondly, it is not for profit and open to the outside world on a (semi)regular basis.. ‧ 國. 學. Thirdly, people there share tools, equipment and ideas without discrimination.. ‧. Fourthly, it has a strong emphasis on technology and invention. Fifthly, it has a. sit. y. Nat. shared space (or is in the process of acquiring a space) as a center of the community.. io. sharing information. (Moilanen, 2012, p. 95). al. er. Finally, it has a strong spirit of invention and science, based on trial, error, and freely. n. v i n C hthe Taipei Hackerspace, The research site for this study, e n g c h i U is a self-identifying. hackerspace. But what distinguishes a hackerspace from a makerspace, Fab Lab, or other group engaged in similar activities? Although some, including a number of participants in this study, use hackerspace and makerspace interchangeably, others have maintained that there are meaningful differences (Cavalcanti, 2013). Fab Labs are a project of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and are an interconnected network of workshops that adhere to a charter and must have a required list of equipment on hand ("Fab Lab FAQ," 2013). The distinction between hackerspaces and makerspaces is less obvious, however the specific lineage and entirely decentralized, grassroots development of hackerspaces sets them apart from xi.

(14) makerspaces, which were originally popularized by Make Magazine (Cavalcanti, 2013; Maxigas, 2012). Hackerspaces are the focus of this study due to their special character as a grassroots, decentralized phenomenon with a historical lineage and ideological context. When the terms “makerspace” or “maker” are used, it is to indicate the broader network involved in similar activities.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. xii. i n U. v.

(15) Introduction Hackerspaces might seem, at first glance, to be niche communities and peripheral phenomena, however they have shown themselves to be front-line testing grounds for technologies that are having wide-reaching effects, along with significant exemplars of an alternative, community-based innovation, collaboration, and education model. As relatively recent phenomena that emerged independently of more established institutional networks, the question of how hackerspace communities function and how they emerge in geographically. 政治大 Hackerspaces exist at the nexus of a number of the most influential and potentially 立. distributed locations remains to be more fully explored.. ‧ 國. 學. disruptive socio-technological forces shaping contemporary society. What are some of the socio-technological developments to which these communities are linked? One of the most. ‧. important of these is Free (Libre) and Open Source Software (FLOSS). The development and. sit. y. Nat. growth of FLOSS is revolutionary not only because of the programs that are produced, such. io. al. er. as the emblematic GNU/Linux operating system, but perhaps even more so because of the. v. n. “commons-based peer production” model that lie behind the software and its challenge to. Ch. engchi. i n U. market-based assumptions and use of law (Benkler, 2002; Coleman, 2012; Tuomi, 2001). Hackerspaces are closely tied to the FLOSS movement, various FLOSS programs are frequently used by participants, and the kind of collaboration that takes place in hackerspaces could be considered a physical world version of commons-based peer production. Additionally, the way physical goods are designed and manufactured is rapidly changing, with increased connectivity, combined with growing availability of low-cost design and manufacturing tools, allowing for rapid prototyping, duplication, and customization of objects on a hitherto unseen scale. The CAD (computer-aided design) software and “personal fabrication” equipment—such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC (computer numerical 1.

(16) control) milling machines—that are central to these developments are also often used in hackerspaces. Another recent development that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions and has found a welcome home in hackerspaces is the citizen science and DIYbio (“do-ityourself” biology) movement. Hackerspace participants are a group with diverse skills and interests that extend well beyond writing computer code. The materials and technologies they work with are similarly diverse. Artists, counterculture visionaries, DIY crafters and electronics hobbyists, along with the citizen scientists and DIYbio practitioners, hackers, programmers and the free and open source software they spawned are all represented in hackerspaces. Hackerspaces have. 治政 become like community DIY laboratories, art studios, and 大 factories: all types of projects are 立 developed in them, by all types of people. They are places where the technology neophyte. ‧ 國. 學. can become an expert through a social and collaborative process made possible by the. ‧. centrality of interaction within a shared space.. sit. y. Nat. Perhaps in part due to a malleability arising from their tolerance for a wide range of. io. er. pursuits that hackerspaces have proliferated as rapidly as they have over the past two decades. Since the first ones emerged in the 1990s, hackerspaces have grown both in number. al. n. v i n C hfor the internationalUhackerspace community, and geographic distribution. A website engchi. “Hackerspaces.org”, now lists nearly 1,000 self-identified hackerspaces across the globe (see Figure 1). The model seems to be portable and not limited by culture or geography; the same list shows hackerspaces in 88 countries as of early 2014.. 2.

(17) 政治大 Figure 1. Approximately 1,000 立hackerspaces in nearly 90 countries listed on Hackerspaces.org. Reprinted from Hackerspaces.org, n.d. Retrieved March 15, 2014,. ‧ 國. 學. from http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces.. Though the hackerspace community certainly takes advantage of the connectivity and. ‧. knowledge sharing possibilities of the Internet, it is face-to-face interaction within the. sit. y. Nat. physical confines of each local hackerspace that is both a crucial element to learning,. io. al. er. working on projects, and what gives each local hackerspace its particular identity. It is along. v. n. this community dimension that many of the most interesting dynamics emerge: serendipity. Ch. engchi. i n U. and chance, openness and tolerance, consensus decision-making, project-oriented learning, sharing and collaboration patterns. It is the community dimension that, in large part, contributes to the unique nature of hackerspaces as technologically oriented sites of social learning where participants can also hang out in a manner reminiscent of Oldenburg’s (1998) “third place.” The potential of hackerspaces to generate innovative technologies with impact beyond the hackerspace walls has been demonstrated by MakerBot, one of the first consumer/hobbyist 3D printer companies, which grew out of the New York hackerspace, NYCResistor (Hoeken, 2009). The innovation potential of hackerspaces can also be 3.

(18) leveraged to meet specific needs and design challenges. For examples, when seeking to develop innovative designs for elderly independent living, The University of Ulster partnered with a Belfast hackerspace, Farset Labs (Mulvenna, 2013). Another example of the capacity for innovation and impact inherent in hackerspaces occurred in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Responding to an urgent need for local radiation readings, the Tokyo Hackerspace community led the rapid development of devices for citizen radiation monitoring, as well as contributing to the platform (Safecast.org) for making the crowd-sourced data accessible to all (Hemmi & Graham, 2013; Kera, 2011a). The rapid deployment of this radiation monitoring system relied on open source hardware and. 治政大the value of these networks international collaboration between hackerspaces, underlining 立. (Kera, 2011a; Storey, 2012). As the hackerspace reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. ‧ 國. 學. indicates, the concept of resilience in the face of natural and man-made disasters is one. ‧. persuasive rationale for supporting hackerspaces and fostering technical skills within. sit. y. Nat. communities (Brugh, 2012; Gauntlett, 2011).. io. er. The non-traditional forms of experimentation and learning that are characterized by hackerspaces present an alternative education and innovation model that is based in. al. n. v i n C h Seeing the valueUin this alternative learning model, community, sharing and experimentation. engchi educators have created hackerspace-style areas in public libraries and schools (Kalish, 2011; Maillioux, 2011). The potential of hackerspace-style learning and innovation has not gone unnoticed by government. In 2011, the city of Shanghai announced that it would sponsor 100 “innovation houses” or “chuangxin wu” ( like Shanghai’s XinCheJian (. ) that are modeled in part on hackerspaces. ) (Lindtner & Li, 2012). In Beijing, the municipal. government sponsors the Beijing Makerspace (Sun, 2014). In the U.S., the military’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been providing grants to members of the hackerspace community for research on space exploration and other projects 4.

(19) because, in the words of one program manager, “Magic comes from these places” (O'Leary, 2012). In 2012, O’Reilly Media’s MAKE division announced that it was the recipient of a $10 million DARPA grant for implementation of a school program inspired by hackerspaces and makerspaces (Dougherty, 2012). Government and military funding for projects has become a divisive issue in the larger hackerspace community, bringing to light differing values among participants. Prominent members of the hackerspace community, including Mitch Altman, co-founder of San Francisco hackerspace, Noisebridge, have argued against accepting military money on the principle that it will inevitably exert influence over subsequent choices that O’Reilly, the schools, and the students make, whether overtly or covertly (Altman, 2012).. 立. 政治大. Given the wide-ranging connections and diversity of actors involved in hackerspaces,. ‧ 國. 學. it is not surprising that there are disagreements within the broader community. The tensions. ‧. among participants regarding outside funding sources reveals hackerspaces to be sites that are. sit. y. Nat. implicated in and connected to larger political and ideological debates. These tensions. io. er. regarding ideologies and values are interconnected across scales, from the larger, quasiinstitutional negotiations in which hackerspaces have become collectively involved, to the. n. al. i n C local, intra-space negotiations betweenhmember participants. engchi U. v. One necessary step in furthering an examination of hackerspace dynamics is. contextualization along the socio-cultural and historical dimensions. A brief survey of the context in which hackerspaces developed and are situated makes clear that they did not emerge on ideologically neutral ground. Hackerspaces are deeply influenced by computer hacker culture, which can be traced primarily to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through to Richard M. Stallman and his highly influential Free Software Foundation (Levy, 2010). One of the most significant innovations from the hacker community, and one which plays a large role in hackerspace 5.

(20) activity, is their challenge to copyright regimes and existing market structures: free and open source software. The community hackerspace model was developed primarily by the Chaos Computer Club, a hacker collective in Germany, whose members espouse a system of ethics promoting unlimited access to computers, information freedom, decentralizing authority, and a belief in the power of computing to change peoples lives for the better ("Hackerethik," n.d.). Hackerspaces evolved most directly out of hacker culture and hacker collectives, but they are also connected to a number of other movements and groups in web-like fashion. Many of the early figures in computing and the Internet in the U.S. were also associated with the 1960s. 治政大 whose strains can also counterculture movement and projected a kind of techno-utopianism 立. be seen in hacker culture. The modern DIY and crafting movement, also represented within. ‧ 國. 學. hackerspaces, was influenced by the 1980s punk movement, but can also be connected to. ‧. ‘60s counterculture in the form of Stewart Brand’s omnibus DIY manual, The Whole Earth. sit. y. Nat. Catalog. The Chaos Computer Club itself emerged from a European milieu that had been. io. er. shaped by the “cultural shock” of 1968 and included autonomist-related social phenomena like squatted community centers, community media labs, and pirate radio stations (Maxigas,. n. al. 2012).. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The impressive propagation of hackerspaces globally, combined with examples of their potential for wide-ranging impact and increasing external recognition of their merits as learning and innovation environments, all indicate that there are significant merits to the hackerspace model. If hackerspaces present a successful model for a technologically oriented learning community that is an alternative to more traditional modes of education and innovation, we should seek to understand why this is the case and identify the principal characteristics and variables contributing to this success. The historical and ideological dimensions of hackerspace development are important as it has been proposed that the 6.

(21) political convictions of a community can function as an enabler of technological creativity and collective innovation (Maxigas, 2012; Söderberg, 2011). To date, there are still relatively few academic studies of hackerspaces, and fewer still that explore the dynamics of how hackerspaces come to exist, organize and develop. Given the relative dearth of research on the topic, this study is primarily exploratory and its aims are to identify some key issues and dynamics in the development of one particular hackerspace. In the process, this study also seeks to situate the hackerspace phenomenon in the context of its historical influences and related communities, to review related research, and to conduct original qualitative research and analysis in order to better understand how interactions. 治政 among diverse actors create a hackerspace community. 大立. For primary data collection, this study takes an emerging hackerspace in Taipei,. ‧ 國. 學. Taiwan as its site. The selection of this site serves multiple purposes: 1) it is accessible to the. ‧. researcher, as is necessary for field work and interviewing, 2) it is new, and the process by. sit. y. Nat. which it emerged can be observed, and 3) it is located in a non-Western cultural environment. io. er. that is relatively distant from the movement’s explicit origins, therefore aspects of the model’s adaptability and transferability can be explored. There is a particular focus on the. al. n. v i n social and interaction-based nature C of learning, and doing projects in the Taipei h e n gorganizing, chi U Hackerspace.. 7.

(22) Literature Review The Hackerspace Model and its Social and Historical Context Hackerspaces have history. Hackerspaces are located within a web of broader contemporary trends and past influences. These developments and related communities represent explicit and implicit values that give context to hackerspace organizing. As will be seen, these values and influences are varied and sometimes seemingly at odds with one another. Hackerspaces exist within a contested landscape with a dynamic push and pull of values and practices.. 立. 政治大. Defining the hackerspace model. How should a “hackerspace” be defined amidst a. ‧ 國. 學. landscape of similar and related communities? There are many different names for the types of communities organized around hacking and DIY (or DIWO, “do-it-with-others”). ‧. production: hackerspace, makerspace, Fab Lab, and hacklab, are some of them. Moilanen. y. Nat. sit. (2012) wrote, “The variety of names for the new 'do-it-yourself' communities expresses the. n. al. er. io. variety and diversity of the movement” (Moilanen, 2012, p. 95). Others have tried to draw. i n U. v. clearer distinctions between these names and sub-categories, situating hackerspaces and their. Ch. engchi. development in their comparative, historiographical context (Maxigas, 2012). However, as Moilanen (2012) added, “Scientific attempts to clarify the differences of various 'do-ityourself' hacking communities are still rare. A shared understanding of how to use the different descriptions and names of the movement is still missing, but some attempts toward a consensus exist” (p. 95). The definition of hackerspace, along with that of the other related typologies in the larger DIY, peer-production community, has a degree of fluidity. However, various operational definitions have been put forth, and a survey of these shows that in spite of the variations there are a number of common themes. 8.

(23) Returning to Moilanen’s (2012) list, hackerspaces are: •. operated by their members in a spirit of equality. •. not for profit and open to the public. •. places where people share tools, equipment and ideas without discrimination. •. places that emphasize technology and invention. •. shared spaces that form the center of a community. •. places with a strong spirit of invention and science, based on trial, error, and freely sharing information.. 政治大 hackerspaces are “community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on 立 According to the principal online site for sharing hackerspace information,. ‧ 國. 學. their projects” (Hackerspaces.org, 2013). People gather to share, learn and experiment together with electronics and digital technology, among other things. Participants work with. ‧. technology, but as opposed to communities that exist primarily online, hackerspaces bring. sit. y. Nat. people together face-to-face to share and work together. Additional nomenclatures to. io. er. describe similar spaces include makerspaces, hacklab, and Fab Lab, although it can (and will). al. v i n Ch communities denoted by them. As hackerspace e n gparticipant c h i Uand researcher Maxigas (2012) n. be argued that there are important differences and connotations to the terms and the. noted, one important distinction is whether the space is primarily generated and led by an existing community or by actors from the formal education or commercial sectors. Fab Labs, for example, are explicitly tied to an institution, in this case, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms. In order to participate in the Fab Lab network, organizers must meet specific equipment requirements and adhere to a Fab Lab Charter ("Fab Lab FAQ," 2013). The multiplication of hackerspaces worldwide in recent years has been called a “viral phenomenon” (Maxigas, 2012, p. 1).There are hundreds of hackerspaces listed on 9.

(24) Hackerspaces.org. Some well-established ones include c-base in Berlin, NYCResistor in New York City, and Noisebridge in San Francisco. On the practical side, the operating costs are typically paid for by member contribution and sometimes also by revenue from offering classes. The solution to the question of how to pay the rent varies between spaces, however they often have membership fees and also encourage donations (Williams, Gibb, & Weekly, 2012). Hackerspaces are typically welcoming to a variety of people from different backgrounds. Williams et al. (2012) write, “On a typical evening at a hackerspace, you might encounter hardcore computer programmers, designers, technology novices, weavers,. 治政 biologists, and Roomba tinkerers. Any one of those people大 might happen to encounter your 立 project and offer an interesting idea or even the solution to a problem that has had you. ‧ 國. 學. stymied. This intermixing creates dialogue and exposes participants to designs and concepts. ‧. from many different arenas” (pp. 18-19). The learning environment is made more robust by. sit. y. Nat. both a culture of sharing information and the openness and diversity of membership.. io. er. Often, the aims and goals of a specific hackerspace on a community level are purposefully painted in broad strokes. For example, the motto of NYCResistor, New York’s. al. n. v i n C and first hackerspace, is “We learn, share, things” (NYCResistor, 2013). It is this h emake ngchi U. purposeful lack of specificity that allows for a high level of diversity in both participants and activities pursued. In a similar vein, there is often a general resistance to rules and restrictions and a preference for general guidelines such as that of San Francisco’s Noisebridge hackerspace: “Be excellent to each other.” Although they share common characteristics and generally define themselves loosely, each hackerspace has a unique, local identity based on the interests and beliefs of individual member participants. Some tend to be oriented towards entrepreneurship, while others adopt a more punk/DIY/hacker ethos, or contain more artists, or scientists. However, whether the 10.

(25) aim of the individual or the collective orientation of the group is towards producing a product that can be sold, disrupting the use of a product that can be sold (such as veteran hacker Mitch Altman’s “TV B Gone”), designing an interactive art installation, or something else entirely, the experience and use of the space is social, project-based and oriented toward a productive end. Although commonalities exist between the various communities organized around DIY, DIWO, and peer-production with new technologies, significant differences remain. Hackerspaces are special phenomena in a number of ways, however in relation to other DIY communities the primary distinguishing characteristic is that there is a large and vibrant self-. 治政大in a largely “organic” manner, identified global network of hackerspaces that has developed 立 outside of traditional learning, business, or media institutions and their frameworks. In. ‧ 國. 學. addition, hackerspaces display a particularly rich ideological background and web of. ‧. connections to other movements.. sit. y. Nat. Hackerspaces at the nexus of contemporary trends in “personal fabrication” and. io. er. “commons-based peer production”. More recently, a number of factors have led to a dramatic growth of hackerspaces and similar communities worldwide. The ease of. al. n. v i n Ch information sharing and collaboration afforded by the Internet, e n g c h i U the increased accessibility and affordability of hardware and software tools, and the hacker and open source movements, have all contributed to the boom in hackerspaces. Affordable, well-designed open source hardware like the Arduino processors (see Appendix A) or RepRap 3D printers are the product of vibrant open source and DIY communities. This gear did not simply fall from the sky. As Williams, Gibb, & Weekly (2012) put it, “(These hardware platforms) are inexpensive and easy to use because of these communities and the design philosophy they espouse.“ The authors continued on to say, “the tenets of open source hardware foster a proliferation of creative, inexpensive, and well11.

(26) supported tools…which has democratized innovation.” (p. 16) It is the open source movement that has created the conditions that help hackerspaces and the “maker” movement in general to thrive, which in turn produce further innovations in a “virtuous cycle” (Williams et al., 2012). The modern open source movement as such, grew out of a number of different subcultures, including the “hacker culture” that developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1960s and ‘70s (Powell, 2012, p. 692). Perhaps the seminal FLOSS story is that of the development of an entirely open source operating system: GNU/Linux. Open source licenses like the GNU license and open source development models like that. 治政大beyond the world of software. used to create Linux have had great influence both within and 立 In an example of a linguistic and usage change that perhaps also reflects practice, the term. ‧ 國. 學. “open source”, at its root a noun, is now used by many colloquially as a verb; to “open. ‧. source” something implies a liberating act or practice of sharing. Such “open source. sit. y. Nat. practices” have extended beyond the open source software community to include participants. io. er. in media and culture (the “Free Culture” and Creative Commons movements), as well as hardware. The use of open source software and hardware is deeply embedded in hackerspace. n. al. practices.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Open source as applied to hardware. A number of issues arise when considering the application of open source processes to hardware development and production. As Powell (2012) wrote, “The major transformations of software markets promulgated by open source software licences were as much a result of the non-material quality of software as they were of the actions of peer-production communities of practice” (p. 698). In other words, the success of the free and open source software movements has been due in large part to the ease and negligible cost in accessing, duplicating and modifying code, as well as keeping records of these modifications and indicating free or open source status. The very nature of 12.

(27) digital data in the form of software code allowed for rapid and extensive reproduction of free and open source software (Powell, 2012). The physical and material nature of hardware presents particular issues in the application and development of free or open source frameworks for objects. There are manufacturing and transportation costs related to hardware. To date there are no easy or standardized “version control systems” for open source hardware as there are for software. In addition, at the intersection of software and hardware, a lack of established free or open source licenses for computing hardware makes it difficult and labor-intensive for the FLOSS community to write and update compatible software (Stallman, 2002a, p. 26).. 治政 There have been a number of efforts to codify open大 source hardware practices. 立. CERN, the European nuclear research organization, has promulgated an Open Hardware. ‧ 國. 學. license, in an effort to create for hardware what the GNU General Public License (GPL) is to. ‧. software (CERN, 2013). Another proposed license highlighted the mix of aims and values. sit. y. Nat. embedded in it, saying open source hardware should “maximize the ability of individuals to. io. er. make and use hardware. Open source hardware gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging commerce through the open exchange. n. al. of designs.” (OSHW, 2012). Ch. engchi. i n U. v. One additional reason such licenses are important is that they facilitate the survival of technologies and continuity of a development process. For example, the developers behind Arduino were working at an institution (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) that was going to close, so they “open-sourced” the hardware and allowed the project to continue on without any proprietary constraints (Williams et al., 2012). The development of 3D printer technology also illustrates some of the issues related to open source hardware. 3D printers use a form of additive manufacturing where objects designed using CAD software can be “printed” layer by layer using materials such as ABS 13.

(28) plastic thread. Hackerspaces and other related “fabbing” (DIY fabrication) sites and communities commonly use 3D printers. The low cost and wide availability of this technology is due largely to open source development of this hardware. The RepRap open source 3D printer project, which has as one goal the design of a 3D printer that is capable of replicating itself, has been adopted by a large, global community (Söderberg & Daoud, 2012). An interesting counterpoint to the RepRap project is Makerbot. Makerbot is a 3D printer company that emerged out of the New York hackerspace, NYC Resistor, and was built upon the RepRap open source project. With the release of the Replicator 2 model printer, Makerbot has elected to keep some elements closed and proprietary. This decision. 治政 ignited a spirited debate in the 3D printing and open source大 community, with many people 立. expressing anger at Makerbot’s perceived betrayal of its open source roots. The founder of. ‧ 國. 學. the RepRap project, mathematician Adrian Bowyer, presaged the debate with an article on. ‧. the RepRap wiki where he stated his reasons for “why RepRap is, and always will be, Open. sit. y. Nat. Source” (Bowyer, 2011). Bowyer wrote that while he believes that open source is morally. io. er. and politically good, the foremost reason for RepRap’s open source nature is that “Darwinian game-theoretic analysis says that Open Source is an evolutionarily-stable strategy for a useful. al. n. v i n replicating machine that is intendedC to h maximise its numbers e n g c h i U in the world” (Bowyer, 2011).. Along these lines, the RepRap rejoinder to Makerbot’s introduction of a partially proprietary scheme would be that such a closed source move will end up limiting the dissemination of their hardware, and the greater “reproductive fitness” of a pure open source strategy such as RepRap’s will always out-compete closed source systems (Bowyer, 2011). Copyright and patent issues. Interestingly, as 3D printers are objects that can produce other objects, open/closed source, copyright or patent issues arise not only with regard to the printers themselves but also with regard to the objects they produce. There are certainly still limitations to the type of objects that can be duplicated via a RepRap, Makerbot, or the 14.

(29) numerous other commercially available amateur/hobbyist grade printers, however the explosion in their popularity and the rapid improvement in print quality makes it possible to imagine that objects of greater and greater complexity will be duplicated with the hardware of the future. As technology continues to improve and 3D printer duplicates can increasingly substitute for their commercial versions, there will be clashes between industry and duplicator that echo those seen over media copyrights in the era of Internet sharing. In his prescient short story “Printcrime” (2006), journalist and author Cory Doctorow imagined a man imprisoned for illegally printing out objects (after the man is released from jail, he decides that instead of printing mere contraband he will devote himself to printing more. 治政大 certain objects or goods are printers, a la RepRap). Such clashes over the rights to produce 立 likely to occur, and this is the terrain that communities like hackerspaces are exploring.. ‧ 國. 學. Alternative R&D, personal manufacturing, innovation. The increased availability. ‧. and accessibility of these technologies, along with their socio-political and community. sit. y. Nat. contexts, “is embodied by the global rise of alternative R&D places existing outside of the. io. er. government funded universities or even corporate R&D labs” (Kera, 2011b, p. 52). Alternative R&D spaces like hackerspaces sometimes hold seemingly incompatible. al. n. v i n ideological influences in some kindC of h balance: “These low-tech e n g c h i U and open source strategies are paradoxically inspired by both EU alternative squat cultures and the American spirit of entrepreneurship. The global and alternative R&D places are made possible by informal networks around the globe that enable very different flows of knowledge and expertise from the official industry and academia. They are becoming testbeds for new models of public participation in Science and Technology but also new models for policy making in which political deliberation merges with design iteration and embraces citizen science paradigms of research” (Kera, 2011b, p. 52).. 15.

(30) Hackerspaces and other fabbing communities often use technology and equipment that are part of the growing trend toward what has been called “personal fabrication” and a “democratization of production” (Bennet, 2010, pp. 4-5). The declining cost of equipment such as 3D printers, CNC (computer numerical control) laser cutters, and milling machines has enabled many designers to engage in “rapid prototyping” of their works-in-progress, when previously they might need to send their designs to offsite manufacturing facilities. The movement toward personal fabrication and customization of products offers convenience and new possibilities to designers, hobbyists, and others, and is related in kind to new developments in manufacturing technologies that may hold also broad benefits for. 治政大 of productive resources has society. A movement toward more efficient spatial configuration 立 been described as “heavy near, light (ideas) far” (McLennan, 2011). A combination of. ‧ 國. 學. factors, including increasing energy costs (both in dollar terms and environmental. ‧. externalities) and the ICT revolution brought by the Internet, are leading to the location of. sit. y. Nat. “heavy” manufacturing near population centers, while simultaneously allowing the “light”. io. er. traffic of information to circulate over greater distances. The benefits of such a reorganization of economic activity could be seen in decreased environmental impact, costs, and products. n. al. Ch. better suited to local circumstances.. engchi. i n U. v. Hackerspaces and related fabbing communities are one embodiment of this trend in production. Inventions and information on how to construct objects are accessed via the Internet, and are then constructed locally using available materials (or, if necessary, small parts ordered online). 3D printers, CNC plotters and milling machines now enable anyone’s product design to be shared globally while the manufacture (“printing”) happens locally. (Of course, if the printers and plastics used to manufacture the object are all shipped long distances, this cancels out the savings on shipping costs and energy.) It is worthwhile to note, however, that the elements of play and experimentation that are central to much hackerspace 16.

(31) activity create a different context for the use of so-called “personal manufacturing” technologies. New technologies that are widely used in the hackerspace and “fabbing” communities are not completely unproblematic from legal and safety perspectives. Recently, a number of freely available designs for 3D printable gun parts have sparked debate about the potential dangers of the era of personal fabrication. The citizen science and DIY bio movements have sparked debate about potential regulation and how to balance risk and innovation (Kellogg, 2012). Hacker & maker media: from Popular Mechanics to Make Magazine and online. 治政大 DIY, hacker and maker platforms. What media and online platforms cater to the broader 立 communities? Make Magazine, an imprint of O’Reilly Media, has become an influential. ‧ 國. 學. player in the broader hacker, maker and DIY community. A Chinese version of the magazine. ‧. is published in Taiwan. O’Reilly Media is a leading computer book publisher that has. sit. y. Nat. branched out into a number of different tech-related areas, including the maker and DIY. io. er. communities, and also has started a number of successful event series, such as the Ignite speaking series, Strata, a “big data” conference, and the global Maker Faire gatherings that. n. al. have also spread to Taipei.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Make Magazine, in one sense, has revived a tradition of tech-oriented hobbyist publications like Popular Mechanics, which evolved into a compilation of hobby projects suitable for a father and son to do in their leisure time (Hertz, 2011). Make Magazine goes further in depth and scope than that description suggests, however, with numerous projects that are often both very creative and complex. In addition to hosting a website with an impressive archive of projects, Make Magzine organizes the aforementioned “Maker Faires” around the world, two day events that bring hackers, makers, and DIY hobbyists together to. 17.

(32) share their projects, participate in classes or demonstrations, and build connections with other attendees. A popular website that hosts an amazing array of crowdsourced DIY craft and electronics projects is Instructables.com, started 2005 by a MIT Media Lab graduate, Eric Wilhelm. Instructables.com is an example of commons-based knowledge production that serves an educational function as well as a symbolic one; by sharing their projects, individual “makers” project a representation of themselves. Another company catering to the hacker/maker DIY community is Adafruit Industries, which sells parts and equipment for electronics projects. The company website, Adafruit.com, also contains many free “how-to”. 治政大 Limor Fried, is an engineer lessons and tutorials on technical subjects. Adafruit’s founder, 立. from MIT and something of a star in the hacker/maker community: she was featured on the. ‧ 國. 學. cover of an issue of Wired magazine [April 2011] about the “DIY Revolution”, in an image. ‧. designed to evoke “Rosie the Riveter”.. sit. y. Nat. Apart from the instrumental role that online tutorials, project guides and equipment. io. er. retailers play, such media also can represent certain values and belief systems. The rapid growth of online maker communities and companies that share information while also selling. al. n. v i n electronic parts and kits has loweredCthe and broadened the reach of h barrier e n gtocparticipation hi U the “maker movement”. On the other hand, Hertz (2011) has claimed that the maker. movement has been “co-opted” by “consumer hobby culture,” although he is not altogether cynical about these developments: this is not necessarily detrimental because it provides an important outlet for personal exploration, increases an understanding of how electronic media actually works and assists individuals to be actors in a culture that is increasingly complex, technological and digitized. (p. 44). 18.

(33) In this way, Hertz emphasized the “empowering” aspect of hacker/maker culture, which enables individuals to be “actors” instead of passive consumers of technology and digital media. The hackerspace family tree: history & diverse influences. Certain activities and technologies are common to both hackerspaces and other DIY and “fabbing” communities and organizations. In addition to sharing common activities and technologies, it has been suggested that these types of groups exhibit “a unique set of values, emphasizing open sharing, learning, and creativity over profit and social capital.” (Kuznetsov & Paulos, 2010, p. 1) In addition, it has been suggested that the value systems of different DIY communities. 治政 will affect the type of work they do, and may even serve as大 enablers of certain types of 立. innovation (Maxigas, 2012; Söderberg, 2011). In order to better understand the dynamics and. ‧ 國. 學. potentialities of hackerspaces and other DIY and fabbing communities, it is important to. ‧. consider what values inform their practices, and where these values may have originated. The. sit. y. Nat. varied origins and development circumstances of some of the main DIY and fabbing. io. er. communities suggest that, although there may be some broad resemblances, these communities and organizations necessarily operate under different norms and value systems.. al. n. v i n Fab Labs, as mentioned previously,C have provenance within an established h ea specific ngchi U. educational institution (M.I.T.), as well certain equipment requirements that must be met in order to be accepted and acknowledged as Fab Labs ("Fab Lab FAQ," 2013). The term “Makerspace”, which has been widely used for DIY, fabbing communities in physical locations, is closely affiliated with O’Reilly Media’s Make Magazine, while TechShop is a for-profit company (Cavalcanti, 2013). Comparatively, hackerspaces emerged in a community-generated, “organic” fashion. Hackerspaces can be linked to multiple communities and movements, including but not limited to computer hackers (see Figure 2).. 19.

(34) 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Figure 2. A diverse set of values and influences.. Hackerspace historical development. One way to approach the history of the. ‧. hackerspace movement as such is by thinking in waves of development. A member of the. sit. y. Nat. hackerspace community, Nick Farr, in a 2009 post on hackerspaces.org, identified three. n. al. er. io. distinct waves. U.S.-based spaces L0pht, New Hack City, the Walnut Factory, and the Hasty. i n U. v. Pastry are identified as First Wave hackerspaces that appeared in the early 1990s (Farr,. Ch. engchi. 2009). The Second Wave, including Germany’s c-base, occurred primarily in Europe and had a more public profile, while the Third Wave includes NYCResistor, Noisebridge and the scores of other hackerspaces around the globe that have sprung up since 2000 or so (Farr, 2009). There is some difference of opinion about whether Farr’s “First Wave” hackerspaces qualify as such, with many maintaining that the first hackerspaces were in Europe. Others have considered what Farr called the “Second Wave” to be the actual birth of hackerspaces. Williams et al. (2012) wrote, “The idea of hackerspaces stemmed originally from Germany’s Chaos Computer Club, which in 1995 arguably created the first hackerspace, c-base in Berlin” (p. 18). The Cologne branch of the Chaos Computer Club 20.

(35) founded a hackerspace in 1999, and two of its members wrote a guide to launching a hackerspace (Ohlig & Weiler, 2007). This guide, originally part of a presentation during 2007’s 24th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, has had a life far beyond that single event and is now a standard reference that is shared (and updated) on Hackerspaces.org ("Design Patterns," n.d.). Titled “Building a Hacker Space”, the primary content of the presentation and document are what the Chaos Computer Club hackers Jens Ohlig and Lars Weiler called “The Hacker Space Design Patterns Catalogue” (Ohlig & Weiler, 2007). The presentation by Ohlig and Weiler was partially in response to a request received. 治政 from Bre Pettis (later a co-founder of New York City’s first大 hackerspace, NYCResistor) and 立 other U.S. hackers who flew to the 2007 Chaos Communication Camp outside Berlin. ‧ 國. 學. immediately after attending the Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas (Pettis, 2007). This. ‧. “Hackers on a Plane” tour, through meeting European hackers and learning more about. sit. y. Nat. hackerspaces, inspired Pettis and George Shammas to found one of the emblematic U.S.. io. er. hackerspaces, NYC Resistor, upon their return to the U.S. ("Hackerspaces: the beginning," 2011, p. 52). Mitch Altman also credited meeting encouraging compatriots and viewing. al. n. v i n C h Patterns” presentation Ohlig & Weiler’s “Hacker Space Design e n g c h i U at the 2007 Chaos Communication Camp with solidifying his and security researcher/hacker Jacob. Appelbaum’s resolve to found San Francisco’s Noisebridge hackerspace; additionally, he described this experience as similarly leading Nick Farr to co-found Washington, D.C.’s HacDC hackerspace (Altman, 2011). For these leading U.S. hackerspaces, it was the founders’ first-hand experience at the Chaos Communication Camp combined with the social context of encouraging fellow hackers that led them to take action and launch hackerspaces upon returning to their respective home cities.. 21.

(36) Hacker culture and “The Hacker Ethic”. The first hackerspaces, such as c-base in Germany and U.S.-based spaces L0pht, New Hack City, the Walnut Factory, and the Hasty Pastry, emerged directly from hacker collectives in the 1990s (Farr, 2009; Williams et al., 2012). Though not the only group to have influenced the birth and development of hackerspaces, hackers are the one with the most direct lineage. The origins of hackers and hacker culture precede the emergence of the first hackerspaces by several decades. Steven Levy, in the afterword to the 25th anniversary edition of his 1984 classic, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, describes MIT as “the Mesopotamia of hacker culture” (Levy, 2010, p. 471). Beginning in the late 1950s, students at MIT began experimenting with and. 治政大 had received. The hacking “hacking” the cutting edge computer equipment the university 立. culture at MIT became more vibrant over the 1960s and ‘70s, which also saw the growth of. ‧ 國. 學. the hacking scene in Northern California, including the Homebrew Computer Club, where. sit. y. Nat. (Levy, 2010).. ‧. the Apple Computer and a number of other early personal computer companies were born. io. er. Another early hotbed of hacker activity was the “phreaker” scene, which involved reverse-engineering telephone systems in order to make free calls or otherwise hack and play. al. n. v i n Cbehind with the networks and the computers (Maxigas, 2012). The early “phreakers” h e nthem gchi U. reportedly were active at about the same time as the early MIT hackers; in the late 1950s, a boy named Joe Engressia, who happened to both be blind and have perfect pitch, first discovered he could manipulate phone network switching by whistling a 2600Hz tone into the receiver (Robson, 2004). This activity was technically illegal, and Engressia had a run in with law enforcement as a result of some of his “phreaking” activities, again demonstrating how the exploration and experimentation characterizing hacking activities may disregard legal limitations. Engressia went on to be an iconic figure in the phreaker scene, and his. 22.

(37) discoveries were the basis for the first project that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (who went on to found Apple Computer) built together (Robson, 2004). Hacker culture in Europe can largely be traced to the early 1980s and the birth of the Chaos Computer Club, an important hacker collective that gained notoriety in 1984 when it hacked into a national network and transferred 134,000 Deutsche Marks to itself (the hack was a demonstration of a security loophole; the money was returned) (Maxigas, 2012). Based on his research into these early hackers at MIT and his understanding of their collective values, Levy (2010) put forth the tenets of “The Hacker Ethic”:. •. •. All information should be free.. Mistrust authority–promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged by their hacking.. ‧. •. 政治大 Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative 立. 學. •. Access to computers should be unlimited and total.. ‧ 國. •. You can create art and beauty on a computer.. •. Computers can change your life for the better. (pp. 23-30). al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. •. v. n. The hacker ethic invokes an alternative right and wrong value system. One interesting. Ch. engchi. i n U. example is that of the MIT “dome hacks” ("Hacks on the Great Dome (Bldg. 10).", n.d.). This case provides an example of a hacker morality that may not always correspond to the law: Going on the great dome is ‘forbidden’, so in a sense it constitutes ‘breaking security’…Whether security breaking is wrong depends on what the security breaker proceeds to do with the ‘forbidden’ access thus obtained. Hurting people is bad, amusing the community is good. (Stallman, 2002b) In fact, MIT implicitly condones certain “hacks” by celebrating them in an online gallery and archive hosted at the mit.edu domain (http://hacks.mit.edu/). The same site has a page titled, 23.

(38) “The ‘Hacker Ethic’”, where it is written, “Over many years at MIT, a ‘code of ethics’ has evolved. This informal code is a self-enforced attitude that ensures that hacks will continue to be amusing and well-received both within and without MIT” ("The "hacker ethic"," 2007). The page continues, stating that to be in accordance with the “hacker ethic” a hack must: “be safe, not damage anything, not damage anyone, either physically, mentally or emotionally”, and “be funny, at least to most of the people who experience it” ("The "hacker ethic"," 2007). Free as in “freedom”: free (libre) and open source software principles and practice. The culture of sharing software code was initially inextricably entwined with a political project. Richard M. Stallman, described in Levy’s (2010) book as “the last of the true. 治政 hackers” from MIT and an outspoken advocate for free and大 open software, embodies this link 立 between free software and a “radical” agenda. He is the founder and president of the Free. ‧ 國. 學. Software Foundation and the primary author of the GNU General Public License, which is. ‧. the most widely used free software license ("Open Source License Data," 2013). GNU (the. sit. y. Nat. name is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix”, chosen in keeping with a hacker. io. er. tradition) is the free computer operating system that Stallman created in response to his encounters with closed source systems at the MIT AI Lab (Stallman, 2002a).. al. n. v i n C hsoftware” was notUrelated to price, it referred to the For Stallman, the “free” in “free engchi. freedom to use, modify, and redistribute a computer program: “you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’” (Stallman, 2002a, p. 41). As noted, these freedoms are not theoretical, they are embodied in the GNU General Public License. The method used to prevent people from making proprietary versions of GNU was termed “copyleft” and entails using distribution terms that grant all the freedoms (to run, copy, modify, and distribute) of free software while prohibiting users to add restrictions of their own, thereby ensuring that the source code remains free to all (Stallman, 2002a, p. 20). Stallman (2002a) has proposed four kinds of freedom for free software users: 24.

(39) Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this.) Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this.) (p. 41) In the introduction to Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (2002), law professor and activist Lawrence Lessig described Stallman’s usage of. 治政 “free” by noting that it is akin to the sense in which all the 大 laws, briefs, and opinions that 立 comprise the U.S. legal code and process are free. Lawyers’ legal briefs and their. ‧ 國. 學. corresponding arguments, along with the opinions of judges, are publicly available and free. ‧. to be copied and incorporated in later work at no cost. As Lessig noted, and anyone who has. sit. y. Nat. ever required a lawyer’s services knows, the “free” nature of this legal “source code” in U.S.. io. er. law certainly does not preclude those involved in the process from earning money (Lessig, 2002). Lessig, incidentally, is a founder of the Creative Commons project, which deploys. al. n. v i n C h GNU General Public copyright in a way similar to Stallman’s e n g c h i U License: in order to explicitly allow certain kinds of copying and alteration.. Though they are often confused, it is important to note that the Open Source movement is not synonymous with the Free Software movement. Stallman (2002a) has written that in 1998, people in the Free Software community began using the term “open source software”, and subsequently “The term ‘open source’ quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable.” (p. 55) Stallman went on to state that the difference between the two movements is fundamentally one of values, and that for the Open Source 25.

從實踐中體現： 匯聚而生一個多元文化「Hackerspace」社群 - 政大學術集成

從實踐中體現：匯聚而生一個多元文化「Hackerspace」社群 - 政大學術集成