[rohrpost] "Hacking the Spaces": A critical acclaim of what was, is and could be a hackerspace

[das ende der nahrungskette]

A critical acclaim of what was, is and could be a hackerspace (or 
hacklab, for that matter).

By Johannes Grenzfurthner/Frank Apunkt Schneider (monochrom).

The history of the so-called hackerspaces expands back to when the 
counter culture movement was about to make a serious statement. In 
the decade after the hippies attempted to establish new ways of 
social, political, economical and ecological relationships, a lot of 
experiments were carried out concerning the construction of new 
spaces to live and to work in. Thus, the first hackerspaces fit best 
into a countercultural topography consisting of squat houses, 
alternative cafes, farming cooperatives, collectively run businesses, 
communes, non-authoritarian childcare centres, and so on. All of 
these established a tight network for an alternative lifestyle within 
the heart of bourgeois darkness.
Hackerspaces provided room where people could go and work in 
laid-back, cool and non-repressive environments (well, as far as any 
kind of space or environment embedded into a capitalist society can 
be called laid-back, cool and non-repressive).
Sociological termed "third spaces" are spaces that break through the 
dualistic scheme of bourgeois spatial structure with places to live 
and places to work (plus places for spare time activities). They 
represent an integrative way that refuses to accept a lifestyle which 
is formed through such a structure. This means they can come to 
cooperative and non-repressive ways of working on e.g. technical 
problems that may result in new and innovative solutions. And that's 
exactly where Adorno's "Wrong Life" could slip in too...

http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/