During the 1990s and 2000s, a phenomenon emerged (mostly but not solely) in the Western world. Seemingly as a continuation of the DIY movement, the constitution of so-called hackerspaces — physical, community-based centers or craft workshops—were formed to give people with common interests, usually in technology, science and digital or electronic art, a place to meet and socialize with like-minded people, to share knowledge, and to collaborate on projects. Williams, Gibb and Weekly define hackerspaces as “communities of smart and dedicated individuals” that make complex engineering projects easy and inexpensive (Williams et al. 16). Many of these spaces provide members, local communities and individuals with full access to a wood shop, working tables, high-speed Internet, electronic spare parts and machines such as DIY 3D printers and laser cutters (Williams et al. 18). Hackerspaces often function as centers for peer learning and knowledge-sharing through different social activities, embracing a critical approach to mainstream science and social norms. Amongst research conducted which proposes a nuanced portrayal of hackers, Robertson proposes that hackerspaces are significant for the extent to which they facilitate a clear opposition to the predominant social discourse around consumerism: “They transform the passive consumptive habits of society into an active, critical interaction with consumer products. Hackerspaces foster a culture which is constantly discovering something new” (Robertson 6).
23 Like hacking itself, hackerspaces, sometimes also referred to as hacklabs, makerspaces or fablabs have evolved over time. One notable early hackerspace that appeared in 1995 at the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) event in Germany, had the goal of providing a “community-oriented space, sustainably funded by members, that supports creation and exploration” (Williams et al. 18). C-base, the first attempt at a permanent hackerspace, was founded shortly afterwards in Berlin in 1995.25 Today, there are a few thousand
hackerspaces around the world, and this number is constantly rising.26 In 2012, Maxigas
marveled in this context at the “height of popularity of hackerspaces,” whose mission is the “liberation of technological knowledge” (Maxigas). According to this anthropologist, there have been three waves in the development of hackerspaces: The first one served a relatively small group of pioneers in the 1990s. The second wave incorporated those who started popularizing such spaces among hackers, and who gained recognition from governments. The third wave, as Maxigas points out, is the one in which hackerspaces have grown exponentially and developed into “a movement of some sort” (Maxigas). Hackerspaces represent, on the one hand, local entities with close ties to their geographies and their members’ values. On the other, they are connected together in a global movement that unites their disparate urban spaces. These growing networks compete and cooperate regionally to organize shared events, purchase and share equipment and skills, and exchange information in regional maker fairs and local meetings. In this sense, hackerspaces underline a felt need among hackers to meet and exchange face-to-face. Before I go any further, I wish to provide a really short distinction of the terminology around different spaces of hacking. For example, according to Sarah R. Davies in her recent book Hackerspaces: Making the Maker Movement, the hackerspaces seem to be more computer-hacking centered (Davies 31) in their development of a hacker ethic. In Europe, hackerspaces carry more of a political mission and stress on collective action; in North America, they are more centered into the technological tinkering. According to Davies, makerspaces have less of a clear origin and story than the hackerspaces, offer more
25 For more information, see their website https://c-base.org/ or the Wikipedia description
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-base.
24 generalized interests and are centered in a more commercial and less political setting of crafting and making (34-35). They typically offer more professional equipment. For Davies and Maxigas, the hacklabs, existing mostly in Europe, represent more politicized versions of hackerspaces and have different origins (Davies 35–36; Maxigas). In the end, fablabs represent similar workshops, open to the public and offering uses of tools and equipment, only more education-related and associated to universities and other educational institutions (Davies 36–37). Many of these names are interchangeable, but others have political or cultural differences that find it unacceptable to be called otherwise.
Recent hackerspace research seeks to understand hacking and hacker practice environments as they operate (and spread) all over the world. Maxigas has asked if hacklabs and hackerspaces are in fact synonymous, and explored their political potential (Maxigas). His main inquiry is how hackerspaces might be able to escape the capitalist social apparatus in which they arose, and how this historical embeddedness conditions their potential. Maxigas’s anthropological approach stresses that different hackerspaces have different ideologies and historical roots, and criticizes previous research on hackerspaces as being too centred on innovation and organizational development, leading to a lack of attention to the political dimensions of the hackerspace phenomenon (ibid.).
While hackerspaces are often thought to represent a “digital revolution of fabrication” (Gershenfeld; qtd. in Moilanen 96), the community remains in practice relatively homogeneous and elitist, comprised of the few who take part. Margolis and Fisher have written in this context that there there exists a “geek mythology” associated with the programming culture of the West (See Margolis and Fisher, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing; Margolis and Fisher, “Geek Mythology and Attracting Undergraduate Women to Computer Science”). This phenomenon makes hackerspaces appear to be exclusive “clubhouses” practically inaccessible to female participants and other minorities. As Ella Riley-Adams writes “[a]s with many extensions of startup culture – like open seating plans and kombucha on tap – most hackerspaces tend to be full of dudes, or more specifically, white dudes” (Riley-Adams). Sophie Toupin similarly notes that despite the fact that the ideal of the hackerspace model is openness, a lot of marginalized and minority groups such as “women, queers, [and] people of colour” remain under-
25 represented in traditional hackerspaces (Toupin). Maxigas agrees that Computer Chaos Club hacker culture is “still overwhelmingly male-oriented” despite becoming more welcoming to women and sexual minorities in the recent decade, concluding that the situation points to an unfortunate “reversal of an exceptionally inclusive social and spatial arrangement” (Maxigas). Dunbar-Hester acknowledges that in the technical circles of the open source community, “some people have historically been more equal than others,” when it comes to technological development. This author, who has ethnographically researched a number of hacker communities around North America, confirms that the field of electronics and computing is composed of “white, elite, masculine domains.” (Dunbar- Hester, “If ‘Diversity’ Is the Answer, What Is the Question?: Understanding Diversity Advocacy in Voluntaristic Technology Projects” 92–93)
For the reasons just outlined, Johannes Grenzfurthner and Frank Apunkt Schneider from Monchrom27 have posed deep questions about the future of these movements. These
hackers and authors define hackerspaces as “countercultural community places” in which participants meet and act as a group, not just as individuals. They insist on the vision of hackerspaces as representing non-repressive spaces serving hackers to pass the time in an enjoyable way (Grenzfurthner and Schneider). However, the demography of hackerspaces is often limited by the stereotyped image of the male hacker with his own jargon, dress code, and behaviour.
We need to understand that the hackerspaces of today are under the ‘benevolent’ control of a certain group of mostly white and male techno handicraft working nerds. And they shape a practice of their own, which destines most of the hackerspaces today... As such, we find today’s hackerspaces excluding a lot of ethnic and social groups that don’t seem to fit in or maybe feel so and are scared by the white male nerd dominance (Grenzfurthner and Schneider).
From this point of view, the future of hackerspaces needs to incorporate marginalized groups into hacker practice, politics, and decision-making, in an exercise of openness and freedom worthy of “the intention of the first hackerspaces in countercultural history”
27 Monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group, founded in 1993, with its main seat in Vienna and
26 (ibid.). As the next section makes clear, this positive, inclusive development involves addressing the historical relationship between gender and hacking.
In the analysis of hackerspaces so far, there is a sense of fascination and a tendency toward mere description rather than toward critical analysis related to space, gender, etc. Feminist hackerspaces analysis is useful here in that it can provide a more critical approach to hackerspace practice, shifting attention to include the less visible communities of feminist hackerspaces and their descriptions and positions with regard to technology. As mentioned above, some studies have mentioned the “elitist” character of the relationships within hackerspaces, but they did not look into those issues in depth. Many studies take for granted the “demographic phenomenon” and the “alarming statistics” of predominantly male spaces of hacking, without analyzing the norms, values, and constitution of space boundaries that help to shape human relationships. Such studies participate in a discourse centered on inviting more women into technological fields. Such literature does not analyze the gatekeeping boundaries of hackerspaces, categorize them, or explain how they happen and why they may become discriminatory.