Hackers form a global community, which consists of multiple micro-communities (Barber, 2001, 14). Those autonomous micro-communities are constanly on the move; evolving, hibernating and dying. Hacker micro-communities have been the first to form virtual communities. Among hackers, the most common communication network and base for community is Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Hackers lurk on the channels often all the time, night and day following the text stream. Intense interactions and strong emotional ties are not uncommon among these virtual communities, the members share activities and resources with each other and interaction is supportive rather than comparative. (Whittaker et al., 1997) Rheingold has labelled those channels as “the corner pub, the caf‚, the common room–the “great good place” of the Net.” (Rheingold, 1993, 155) The participants of channels become familiar with each other without meeting in real life. The above virtual communities have been the ruling form of hacker networks for decades.
Over the past years hackers around the world, mostly in Europe and Northern America, have begun to move hacker networks and communities out of the virtuality to the real world. They have begun to form hackerspaces, hacker communities which have both virtual and real world bodies. This article attempts to define Hackerspace generation as the latest form of hacker community. In this article hacker generations are divided into two classes: introvert and extrovert generations. The description of hackerspace generation is build on comparing hackerspaces to hacktivism. The comparison is a valid tool since the two generations have shared history. Therefore both forms of extrovert generations, hacktivism and hackerspaces, are discussed in great length.
Introvert hacker generations
This article adopts Taylor’s view of hacker generations. Although Taylor’s view of hacker generations seems quite valid, it is out of date and needs to be updated to include hackerspaces as the latest generation. The updated generation model can be seen in the figure below.
Figure 1: Hacker generations. Source: Modified from Taylor (2005). Hackerspaces added by the author. Beginning of hackerspace generation is debatable. Hackerspaces emerged in small scale around 1995, but breakthrough happened around 2001-2002.
The generations are divided to two classes, extrovert and introvert generations. Characteristics of introvert generations can be identified to include at least the following. They have been satisfied to stay in somewhat closed circles. They have little or no connections at all to surrounding community and prefer to stay hidden from the public. They have formed independent small communities with little cooperation with other similar groups or communities. The extrovert generations, hacktivists and hackerspaces, in turn wish to be seen, be written and discussed about. In other words, they use the publicity to gain attention of the public. Furthermore, extrovert generations do not want to be separated from the surrounding community, instead they wish to be part of it and influence directly to it. Before discussing the extrovert generations in more details, the previous generations need to be addressed briefly.
The amount of generations varies, but most scholars agree that the first hacker generation was born in MIT during the late 1950s. These early pioneers of computing were labelled as the ‘true hackers’ or ‘original hackers’(Levy, 1984, 15-129) Phone-phreakers are often labelled as the second generation of hackers. (Gollin, 2010; Taylor, 2005; Rosenbaum, 1971; Sterling, 2002) In the 1970′s new generation of hackers emerged. Hackers like Lee Felsenstein, Efrem Lipkin, Bob Albrecht, Ed Roberts did not have access to mainframes. They had to build their own computers, which started the arise of personal computers. Games began to arise as a new form of computer applications in the 1980′s. Before this computers were mostly used merely in industry and science. (Flowers, 2008) Games and hackers have always had deep interwiened relationship. The relationship grew into new dimensions when commercial game developers enabled community based game modification or better known as modding. William Gibson’s Neuromancer and douglas Coupland’s Microserfs(Coupland, 1996) are used as the main examples of fictional portrayals of hacking. Coupland’s book is a vivid fictional (or factional) description of commercially opted hackers, microserfs, working for Microsoft. The life of a microserf is dedicated to their projects and the company. The microserf plods on at a low-level computer job and low salaries without the prospects of long-term financial success with relatively little autonomy.
The next generation, open source, is almost the opposite to ‘microserfs’. Many authors have written about the significance of hackers concerning the Open Source development, which is becoming more and more permanent part of societies as more and more official parts of societies in all levels of different institutions such as schools and administration. (Torvalds ja diamond, 2002; Lakhani ja Wolf, 2005; Lin, 2007; Lakhani ja Von Hippel, 2003; Sauer, 2007; Raymond, 2001) Hackers and open source movement have a close relationship with each other as the founder of the Open Source Initiative describes “[o]ne of the reasons that I support hackers is that they have been telling us for over 10 years that the emperor is naked.”(PBS, 2001) According to Lakhani and Wolf(2005, 6) the term hacker is a badge of honor within the F/OSS community, as opposed to its derisive use in popular media. Open source licences like GPL and it’s derivates are real world applications of abstract hacker ethic where “free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity.”(Levy, 1984, 27)
Open source hackers began the transition from introvert to extrovert hacker communities. Their efforts gained a lot of attention and economical signifigance. Yet their intention was not to turn activities complitely ‘extrovert’. Most of the development is still more or less hidden and in the hands of hardcore hackers. Furthermore, the activities of open source hackers are not political and are concentrated in the virtual space. In the same time the transition towards more socio-politically oriented and extrovert hacker generation known as hacktivism was forming.
Politically active hackers
The term hacktivism was coined by Omega, member of Cult of The dead Cow (cDc) in 1996 (Ruffin, 2004). Ruffin was one of the main architects concerning the content or what the term hacktivism includes and resembles. What seems to be agreed in some level is that hacktivism transfers the tactics of previous activism in the real world to the realm of cyberspace. Hacktivism was borne out of a specific goal of resisting, “the commodification of the internet at the hands of corporate profiteers and violations of human rights at the hands of oppressive governments” (Manion ja Goodrum, 2000, p. 14). Such ideals are evident in the manifestos and group ideologies of hacktivist groups such as the Cult of the Dead Cow (cdc), the Electronic disturbance Theater (EDT) and the Electro-Hippie Collective. Hacktivists want to protest and disrupt; they do not want to kill or terrify.
According to one of the most public figures of hacktivism Oxblood Ruffin the first generation of the kids that “spent their time hacking soda machines” (Ruffin in McKay, 1998) in the 1980′s became middle-aged, age when people live the most active phase of their political lives (Smith ja H., 2009). The above kids were the first ones who grew up in the world which became more and more computer reliant. Furthermore, generation shares experiences of some great changes which causes sometimes fundamental changes in societies such as wars for example (Purhonen, 2007, 16). In this case the great change took place in the middle of the 1990′s. The growing importance of the Internet as a means of communication and the rise of graphical browsers can be seen as another plausible factor that fostered the formation of hacktivist generation.
Hacktivism is not a single-issue political activity. To be more precise, hacktivism is “[...] a policy of hacking, phreaking or creating technology to achieve a political or social goal”.(Fleming, 1998; TheHacktivist, 2003) It includes variety of political focuses and should not be treated as a simple entity.
In the above figure hacktivism is located in the end of the 1990′s. This might be somewhat misleading, since the creation of PeaceNet, a text-based newsgroup service, in 1986 allowed “political activists to communicate with one another across international borders with relative ease and speed.” (Wray, 1998). PeaceNet was the tool before the rise of world wide web, also known as www. To pinpoint the first incidents that could be labelled as hacktivism varies. If viruses and worms are excluded, then MilW0rms (hacker moniker) attacks against Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1998 can be identified as one of the first incidents. The above attack was a classical example of computer intrusion and defacement. During the same year hackers with monikers Bronc Buster and Zyklon, members of hacker group called Legion of the Underground (LoU), disabled firewalls of Chinese goverment to enable chinese people’s free access to web. Probably one of most the well-known hacktivist operation has been X-Ploit’s attack (1998) against Mexican officials, the government of President Ernesto Zedillo, with intention to support Zapatistas. In the attack X-Ploit defaced some of Mexico’s Finance Ministry and Health Ministry websites. Another group called Kaotik Team defaced 45 Indonesian websites to include message that called for independence of East-Timor. Based on these examples, year 1998 could be labelled as the birth year of hacktivism.
Figure 2: Figure 2: Significant Hacktivist organizations. Sources: CCC 2010; Still, 2005; TheHacktivist, 2003.
Some hacktivist organizations are still alive and some have ceased to exist. Two groups, cDc and CCC (see figure 2), were the initial forces to engage political hackerdom. The latter was established as early as September 12, 1981 in Berlin by Wau Holland and Andy Müller-Maguhn. Soon after that, cdc was founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas by three hackers. During the 1980′s CCC protested against French nuclear tests and some of the members of CCC were involved with the German Green Party. Today CCC is known for public demonstrations of security flaws of different systems. One of the latest demonstrations 2008 dismissed the security of biometric identification which can be used for example in passports. The group acquired and published the fingerprints of German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble (Relph-Knight, 2008). The fingerprints could then be copied and used by anyone to fool fingerprint readers. CCC is the main organizer of the biggest annually held European hacker conference SIGINT. CCC also holds annual four-day conference Chaos Communication Congress. Besides the large conferences, the activities of CCC include a great variety of smaller scale conferences, own radio broadcasts and a magazine. In others words, CCC appears to have a significant role in hacking community. As it has been discussed before, hacker generations and organizations intertwine, about which the network of CCC is a great example. CCC is a large nation wide organization and it has established several hackerspaces around Germany (CCC, 2010). In brief, hacktivists have concentrated in the combination of hacking and socio-political issues both locally and internationally, yet at the same time their activities have had a significant role (see figure 3) in building the latest hacker generation which can be labelled as hackerspace generation.
Arising Public Form of Hacker Community
While the above described hacker generations are acknowledged by some scholars (see for example Sterling, 2002; Taylor, 2005) it might be missing the latest development if hackerspaces as one form of the new ‘do-it-yourself’ movement would not be added to it. Hackers are forming new kind of communities, which are quite different compared to earlier hacker communities. Hackerspaces are communities which have a physical space as a centre of the community. Since the hackerspaces as a movement is still new, a simple and compact definition is missing even among the persons who are involved in hackerspaces. Different hackerspaces use different names for their community: hacklab, non-profit workshop, Art Collective, makerspace, tech shop, fab lab and so on. The variety of names for the new ‘do-it-yourself’ communities expresses the variety and diversity of the movement, which might be best desbribed as “digital revolution in fabrication [... which] will allow perfect macroscopic objects to be made out of imperfect microscopic components”. (Gershenfeld 2007, 10)
Scientific attempts to clarify the differences of various ‘do-it-yourself’ hacking communities are rare. Even a shared understanding how to name the movement is still missing.
Troxler has adapted Gershenfeld’s (2007, 3-17) term ‘fabbing’, which is “commons-based peer-production of physical goods”. Troxler (2010, 2) Troxler uses the term as an umbrella for all forms of hacking described below. The term ‘fabbing’ might be somewhat misleading since the word is derived from fab labs (short for fabrication laboratory or fabulous laboratory), which are mostly NSF funded do-it-yourself communities. According to Troxler hackespaces are one form of ‘fabbing’. Other forms of fabbing are: fablabs, techshops, 100k garages, sharing platforms, and open source hardware. Troxler’s view of ‘fabbing’ or ‘do-it-yourself’ culture is more or less focused on the physical production of goods, which neglects the community aspects. Hackerspaces emphasize the role of community, the role of members and independence from outside influences such as funding. (Moilanen 2010) The situation is the opposite for example in fab labs, which are monitored by MIT. (Troxler, 2010, 3) The list of fab labs is maintained by MIT, which in turn is an example of control. A community can declare to be a hackerspace and list themselves to freely maintained wiki based list of hackerspaces. In other words, hackerspaces community itself regulates who can be labelled as hackerspace. Strong desire to be independent is shown in funding the space, which is often based on membership fees rather than external funding. Hackerspaces are hacker communities which apply hacker ethic and stress the value of community, while other forms of ‘fabbing’ seems to be sort of mini production networks or communities. The attitude towards business or business alike communities is what separates hackerspaces from techshops. Community which acts even slightly as a business can not be a hackerspace. dispite the limitations of Troxler’s model, it includes hackerspaces as one of the clearest form of ‘fabbing’ which has spread around the world. Furthermore hackerspaces ecosystem is the biggest form of ‘fabbing’, since the amount of hackerspaces is around 350, of which 250 active and 100 in building process. The amount of fab labs is around 100.(Troxler, 2010, 3)
Figure 3: Chaos Computer Club related Hackerspaces. Source: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/
Hackerspaces began to form during the late 90s, but the grounds for hackerspaces were constructed around the turn of the millennium in Germany by CCC. (Farr 2009) During that time, hackerspaces began to organize as assosiations or alike, became known to the public and identified hacker ethic as one of the key elements to guide activities. The year 2001 was a turning point for hackerspaces. during that time several still existing spaces were established. (Moilanen 2009) One possible reason for the growth might be the recession around the millenium, which was in general one of the ‘best’ recessions in history. The overall economical effects of the recession were relatively small.(Nordhaus 2002, 200-204) Yet it affected the IT sector and the technology bubble had just bursted in Silicon Valley. Therefore several companies were forced to reduce resources in IT expenditures and a lot of ‘hackers’ were laid off in Europe and in US. The hackers still needed a community to attach and different forms of ‘fabbing’ communities offered a new ‘place’ for them. For the above reasons I have located hackerspaces generation to begin at 2001.
Hackerspaces are hacker versions of ‘third places’ defined by Oldenburg. According to Oldenburg ‘third places’ refer to separate social settings or surroundings from the ‘first place’ (home and other similar settings) and ‘second place’ (workplace). (Oldenburg, 1999) The third places are ‘anchors’ of community life, facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. These places serve as focal points of community life, which has eroded due to commercial chains and unifunctional zoning policy.(Oldenburg, 2001, 3) In other words, we have abandoned public parks, playgrounds, schools, cafees and little local stores as places for community life. We have been growing apart from one anothers since the second World War. Third places are needed to reconnect to each other and strengthen community ties. To become a succesful third place, they must be locally owned, independent and small-scale and be based on steady-state business.(Oldenburg, 2001, 4) Furthermore, the places should be highly accessible, within walking distance, free or cheap and involve regularity. When these criterias are compared to hackerspaces, the similarities become obvious.
Eventhough a compact definition of hackerspaces is missing, some features can be assosiated with it. Firstly, a hackerspace is owned and run by it’s members in a spirit of equality. Secondly, it is a nonprofit organization, and open to the outside world on a (semi)regular basis. Thirdly, members of hackerspace share tools, equipment and ideas without discrimination even to outsiders. Fourthly, is has a strong emphasis on technology and invention. Fifthly, it has a shared space (or is working on a space) as a center of the community. Finally, it has a strong spirit of invention and science, based on trial, error, and freely sharing information. Hackerspaces are spesialiced third places for technically oriented people. Hackerspaces function to serve hackers’ “need to construct the infrastructures of human relationships”(Oldenburg, 2001, 2)
Hackerspaces want to be part of surrounding community to enhance technological knowledge and bring people together including the ones who are not so technology prone. Hackerspaces offer knowledge and skills to surrounding community and arrange classes, courses and demonstrations about various topics. They seem to rely on attraction rather than agitation. They also want to create a positive attitude towards technology and the possibilities it can offer to everyone. In this sense hackerspaces promote the hacker ethic, where one key aspect is: “You can create art and beauty on a computer.” (Levy, 1984, 43) and another one: “Computers can change your life for the better”. (Levy, 1984, 45).
Conclusions
Both generations – hackerspaces and hacktivists – have a lot incommon. Both see the possibility of real and virtual, the material and immaterial to merge and coexist. Common antagonistic division of the above worls in traditional hacker communities is blurred in hackerspaces and hacktivism.
Hackerspaces can be seen as the ‘third place’,a setting beyond home and work in which people relax, have fun and meet other hackers in some shared space and do so on a regular basis. Hackerspaces break the intrinsic nature of hacker communities, since they aim to reach to the public to lure more members, are (semi-)open to public and wish to be part of the surrounding community. Hackerspaces are extrovert version of formerly introvert and closed hacker communities. Although hackerspace can be labelled as a ‘third place’, it is a small local community which is technically oriented, not a knitting club or tee party.
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