Hackerspace
[1] Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies.
In 2006 Paul Böhm came up with a fundraising strategy based on the Street Performer Protocol to build Metalab in Vienna, Austria, and became its founding director.
[2] The advent of crowdfunding and Kickstarter (founded in 2009) has put the tools required to build hackerspaces within reach of an even wider audience.
Nicole Lou and Katie Peek reported that from 2006 to 2016 the number of active or planned spaces increased to 1,393, fourteen times as many as in 2006.
[4] The US federal government has started adopting the concept of fully open makerspaces within its agencies as of 2015[update], the first of which (SpaceShop Rapid Prototyping Lab) resides at NASA Ames Research Center.
[5] In general, hackerspaces function as centers for peer learning and knowledge sharing, in the form of workshops, presentations, and lectures.
Hackerspaces can be viewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops, and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things.
Most recent studies of hackerspace in China—where Internet access is heavily censored—suggest that new businesses and organized tech conferences there serve to intervene in the status quo "from within".
As a site of individual empowerment, hackerspace and DIY making enable people to remake the very societal norms and material infrastructures that undergird their work and livelihood.
In addition, some hackerspaces earn income from sponsoring and staffing high-tech flea markets, where members of the general public may buy and sell new and used equipment and supplies.
[20] Makerspaces potentially offer opportunities for young people to engage in STEM knowledge and practices in creative and playful ways, where “learning is and for the making”.
The movement remains an adult, white, middle-class pursuit, led by those with the leisure time, technical knowledge, experience, and resources to make.
[27] Cutting across these areas are specific attention to gender and computer science,[26] indigenous epistemologies and maker activities,[29] and how makerspaces may ground STEM-rich making in the lived experiences and wisdom of youth of color and their families and communities.
[33] The difficulties with opening hackerspaces and makerspaces within non-profit organizations, such as schools and public libraries include cost, space, liability, and availability of personnel.
[further explanation needed] In 2009, Johannes Grenzfurthner published the much debated pamphlet "Hacking the Spaces", that dealt with exclusionist tendencies in the hackerspaces movement.
Which has also led to the formation of FouFem in Montreal, the Mz Baltazar's Laboratory, a start-up organization and feminist hackspace in Vienna, the Anarchafeminist Hackerhive in San Francisco, the Hacktory in Philadelphia and the Miss Despionas in Tasmania, Australia,[62] and myriad others.
For example, White Hill Middle school in Fairfax, California has now opened up their own MakerSpace with a class called "Makers and Hackers".
[65] Fab labs are spaces (part of a network initiated by MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms) whose goal is to enable people to "make (almost) anything".
Some, like AS220 and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts have embraced Fab lab structures to expand the range of media represented in their spaces to include digital fabrication tools.
The Bioengineering Department at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science combines their educational lab space with an open Bio-MakerSpace in their George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace (or Biomakerspace or BioMaker Space), encouraging a free flow of ideas, creativity, and entrepreneurship between Bioengineering students and students throughout the university.
[71] William & Mary is rapidly expanding their makerspace resources to include engineering spaces for all undergraduate & graduate degrees as part of their new Coll curricula.
