One Year of Data Shows the Hacker Community Is Tight-knit and Welcoming 42
szczys writes: The Hacker (sometimes called maker) movement holds sharing of ideas at its core. We at Hackaday are in the unique position to look at a huge data set from the last 365 days showing how people share their own work, and how they discover and interact with others. We've made some data visualizations which cover project topic distribution, views throughout year and by hour in the day, interactions between members of this community, and more.
They use to be called Handy Men. (Score:3)
Back in the day. We just had (mostly men) who used tools to make things to improve their lives. The idea of a garage filled with tools, so we could fix and make things use to be common.
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The work more physically suited to men was done mostly by men. Women, physically suited to different work, tended to be solving problems the same way. Sewing, cooking, midwifery, teaching, and so on.
What a lot of this comes down to is that the class of people who are cognitively rich and economically middle class went through a weird period where consumer-driven culture lessened the opportunities and needs to show that kind of DIY capability (probably due to the unfixability of some things and the move to
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It's pretty rare I go to my hackerspace and not see at least one girl. At times some of our most active members have been female!
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Back in the day. We just had (mostly men) who used tools to make things to improve their lives.
You don't call the things that the women used to perform the crafts which they were permitted to perform "tools"? Knitting needles, sewing implements...
The idea of a garage filled with tools, so we could fix and make things use to be common.
Eh. More common than now, but never really common. Most people have some tools, most people never really had a lot of tools. The exceptions are in farming communities, where being a "maker" is part of life. You don't succeed long as a farmer without making tools.
Personal anecdote (Score:4, Interesting)
As a very introverted person who almost borders on agoraphobic I found both of the local maker spaces welcoming and comfortable spaces.
I am also a real nerd/geek sloth who gets excited about things most people do not care one bit about and have no clue about.
The very first time I saw a meeting at one of the local maker spaces, it was almost life changing. For the first time in my life I saw 50 people who were actually like me. I didn't know other people like me even existed.
All I can say is: if you think you might have the slightest interest in a maker space or maker community, go check it out, like the article says, I have found them to be the most welcoming and non judgmental community I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of.
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Use the term "maker space" when looking, otherwise you might end up in a very different kind of place than you were expecting (and end up on an FBI watchlist to boot).
The OP is one of those pedantic pricks who just CANNOT accept that "hacker" has a different meaning today than it did in the 1950's.
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What are you talking about? Yes, I know the common negative meaning of 'hacker' that you are refering to. I suspect that some uninformed people might still read 'hackerspace' and think that.
But... 'hackerspace' is a pretty well used term now. I'm sure your hypothetical FBI agents would have heard of it. Also... since when have that kind of 'hacker' had their own dedicated spaces? Where would you find such a thing? Would that be on the same block as the pick-pocketer's club, rapists inn and murderers cafe? L
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hackerspaces.org.
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Someone activate the ZOE SIGNAL! ...or just turn on any spotlight really, she'll come to it either way.
OK, so this is our definition of Hacker now? (Score:2)
"The Hacker (sometimes called maker)..."
Woah, OK, hold on a second.
I know this whole "maker" thing isn't all that new here, but this is what we're now trying to redefine a "hacker" as?
Boy, I can't wait to see how the media handles this one, since they've done such a great job reporting on all those "hackers" for the last decade or two. Remember according to them, all hackers are inherently criminals.
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Well, no. The spaces where *originally* called "hackspaces" or "hackerspaces."
However, because of the negative associations the word "hacker" has, the more mainstream name is now "makerspace" or even "createspace."
Source: was a member, years ago, of a "hackspace," and am a member, now, of a "makerspace."
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However, because of the negative associations the word "hacker" has, the more mainstream name is now "makerspace" or even "createspace."
I think maker is probably a better term anyway, since people tend to associate hacker with computers/networks/software, and a lot of things makers create are more real-world physical objects. I know most of those objects involve computers & programming, but that is only a part of it. Tinker also works, but sounds more trivial than maker.
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I'd argue the ideal hacker is multi-disciplinary. Certainly, a lot of the computer hacker (good kind, not media kind) culture comes out of electronics hacking (amateur radio, the world famous MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, etc.). Some computer hackers are fair mechanics as well, because grokking your car or motorcycle or other complicated mechanical conveyance is cool.
Makerspaces obviously make some accommodation to soft hacking, like software development or network stuff. You just don't need big obvious too
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"maker" = hobbyist
"life hack" = useful tip
"shield" = daughter board, or just "board" or "PCB"
I still can't say "Arduino shield" without cracking a smile because it just sounds so silly to me. When I first heard the term I was wondering what kind of EMI / emissions problems people were having with their Arduino single board computers because in the rest of the electronics industry a shield is a metal fence or enclosure around all or part of
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The hacker community is primarily a male dominated space, therefore it must be hostile and problematic, shitlord!
Perhaps we should start marketing the term "hackette", and include a pen-test ISO image with every Barbie Thumb Drive.
Seems to be the desperate approach in CS-land.
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The hacker community is primarily a male dominated space, therefore it must be hostile and problematic, shitlord!
Perhaps we should start marketing the term "hackette", and include a pen-test ISO image with every Barbie Thumb Drive.
Seems to be the desperate approach in CS-land.
Those Barbie thumb drives already have them. Not my fault you haven't discovered it yet.
that isn't the hacker community (Score:2)
Hackers existed before the maker thing and they're not even remotely the same thing.
Call them the makers or anything else not already claimed by something else.