Im not entirely up on this 'Hub', but in my view, the economic question is still being invisibilized. At 400 a month, who exactly is being served by this Hub in our community? Employing people of color and having gender balance, while great, does not address this question, namely the question of creating a space for everyone including poor people, regardless if creed, who could buy one laptop a month at that price.
When they opened, i swung by to find out what they were all about. I asked if the woman of color behind the counter if they were a nonprofit, to which she replied: "Oh no. We are DEFINITELY for-profit'. I remember coming into Sudo and telling that to Anthony..
I worry that what we're seeing here is a way another way to monetize social space, the IRL social space of hackers and the traditional subculture that attends it. Its funny because I feel like bay area hackerspaces effervesced in part as a response to the appropriation and corporatization of hacker culture in the workplace, ie the viral business model adoption of 'startup culture'. Now, hackerspaces themselves, once refuges of sorts, are being recuperated (in the Situationist reading) or mythologized (in a structuralist, Barthes-ian reading) by these same forces. Except that theyre not hackerspaces, theyre 'co-working' spaces.. spaces with no culture, except the fukture of work - finding work, 'networking', making yourself more marketable - nothing 'wrong' with that per se, except that its also a subtle if effective reframing of hacker culture into one thats perhaps entirely framed by money and capital and helping yourself, rather than learning cause its just fun, or helping others, or caring..or about community in the traditional sense.
Ie it serms to me, albiet from afar, thst its far more a business, than a community; a model, not a culture; about helping yourself, rather than helping others.
Thats my worry anyway - not a critique as such, just my worry.
On Thursday, March 27, 2014, Jehan Tremback <
jehan.tremback@gmail.com> wrote:
Eddan's got it right:
"Additionally, I think there may be some misunderstanding about what having an open knowledge, commons-oriented set of agreements. The logic of open knowledge systems is to celebrate the spread of these norms as they become more widely adopted - concern about 'copying and pasting' seem to perpetuate an exclusive rights kind of thinking."