Translator: Hiroko Kawano Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
Wow, it's great to be here.
I have a vision:
a world full of centers of unique community,
each supporting the individuals there to explore and do what they love,
each an inspirational source of true education,
where anyone can learn what they need to live the lives they want to live,
each a vibrant hub of a local community,
each supporting the other community centers to flourish.
This is what the hackerspace community is all about.
And it's already happening in a huge way.
And how do I know?
Because this is the life I live 24/7,
all day, all night, all year round.
In the last 63 months,
over 1,100 hackerspaces have popped up all over the planet,
seemingly out of nowhere
and seemingly in very unlikely places.
You know, what is going on here?
There's more popping up all the time.
But what's going on
is that hackerspaces provide two unique, very deep universal needs,
two needs that have been way too scarce for way too long:
community and creative expression.
We all evolved as a species on the planet
to survive in a sometimes hostile environment,
supporting each other in community.
We need community.
It's in our DNA.
One of the things we did in community
was to get together to make and share cool tools.
And just because we can now buy anything we want
doesn't mean we don't need to create.
We have a deep, inner drive to create.
It's in our DNA.
Hackerspaces provide this magical combination,
creative expression plus community,
and bring them together making dreams come alive.
A hackerspace is a real physical space
like a storefront in LA or a warehouse in Detroit,
where people are supported through supportive community
to explore and do what they love through hacking.
Hacking is taking what is,
improving upon it to the best of your ability
and sharing it.
Since anything, no matter how cool, can be improved,
we can hack anything.
We can hack computers and electronics, of course,
but also art and craft, math, science.
You can hack yourself, society, the planet.
We can and do hack anything.
The choices we make have a powerful impact on our lives.
I started my life out as a total depressed blob of a kid.
But I'm now a jet-setting, crazy-haired inventor who loves my life.
I started this transformation by making choices:
good choices and bad choices.
I learned from my messes and successes,
learning and growing, learning and growing,
and learning and growing,
taking what is,
learning to the best of my ability
and eventually sharing it.
That's hacking.
And it works.
Even if it wasn't always easy.
Even if it still isn't easy.
But it's so rewarding.
It eventually led to me making a living doing what I love,
which is turning TVs off in public places.
I actually invented a key chain that does this,
and I make a living from it.
Life is weird.
But the success of TV-B-Gone, an open-source project,
got me invited to my first hacker conference.
Unlike the world around us,
imagine what it might be like to be surrounded -
perhaps somewhat like here -
with people almost all of whom do what they love.
It's incredibly high.
And that was the experience at my first hacker conference.
I didn't want it to end, but like all conferences, it did.
And I wanted more, and I got it in abundance
a few months later at Chaos Communication Camp 2007,
a huge outdoor camp near Berlin.
And no one knew it at the time,
but this was to be the birth of the hackerspace movement.
At this point in history,
there were only about 50 hackerspaces in the world, mostly in Germany.
But all of the elements that would become part of hackerspaces everywhere
were already at camp, Chaos Camp.
There was technology, of course,
but also art and craft and blinking lights out the wazoo
and lasers
and people sharing enthusiastically their projects.
Teaching, learning, sharing - a great supportive community.
And, of course, there were great talks and presentations.
One talk, in particular, really hit home for me.
Some German hackers talked about how to start your own hackerspace.
It was so obvious.
I didn't have to wait.
None of us had to wait for the next conference.
We could have this kind of energy
all day, all night, all year round
at a hackerspace in my hometown.
I wasn't the only one inspired by this.
A bunch of us North Americans got together,
and we talked about this for the duration of camp.
We all knew we would start hackerspaces
when we got home.
And we all did.
And we did it the way all hackerspaces are started now:
You envision a culture you want to be a part of.
You put it out there,
which attracts more people and strengthens the culture,
which attracts more people, etc.
You pick a name, you get a website, you make a logo, you make stickers,
you hand out stickers to anyone and everyone.
You talk to anyone and everyone, and you don't shut up about it.
You meet every Tuesday.
And you talk about all the details to make it happen, and you play.
Eventually, you then get a space.
This worked really well for us at Noisebridge,
the hackerspace I co-founded in San Francisco.
We talked about it for about a year and worked out all the details,
and when we got our first space, it was incredibly exciting for everyone.
We raised $12,000 in 24 hours to pay for rent.
And we've never been in debt since.
And within weeks,
we had enough donations to have a full kitchen, a machine shop,
a complete electronics lab,
a bunch of sewing machines,
tables, lamps, chairs.
Instantly,
we were full of really cool people working on cool projects and sharing them.
Teaching, learning and sharing.
We had vibrant community.
And since then -
oh yeah, and the hackerspaces
that were started similarly in other parts of North America
together with the existing hackerspaces established in Europe
and together with hackerspaces.org,
a networking website that a bunch of us created -
this served as examples for the rest of the world,
and within a year, there were over 100 new hackerspaces
that popped up all over the planet and growing all the time.
So since then, I have been -
whenever I travel giving talks or whatever,
I look up and visit the local hackerspace.
And if they want,
I give a workshop doing what I love,
which is teaching how to solder
and how to make cool things with electronics,
which for me is really fun.
It's all ages, all skill levels, and people just enjoy it.
I have so many kits for people to play with.
And it's my way of sharing what I love,
and it attracts more people to hackerspaces
to strengthen the community.
Here's a picture of me doing a workshop at a local hackerspace
right here in Brussels.
There are several in the area of Belgium here.
Please check that out.
So, uh ... oops!
I want to share with you some of the projects
that I have seen at hackerspaces
that all grow from people doing what they love.
And like most projects at hackerspaces,
they're all totally open-source
so people can share and innovate from them.
This I found when I was first invited to my first hacker conference.
I looked online to see what they were about,
and I found this project which hooked me into the scene forever.
The city of Berlin gave access to this building
to the Chaos Computer Club,
a very well-respected hacker group in Germany.
They put a bright light in every window,
and they put it under computer control
to turn the building into a giant computer screen.
They put a bunch of software to control it online, that's open-source,
inviting the whole world to hack on it.
It started off with just playing an image on the building,
quickly grew so it would play animated sequences and scrolling text
and eventually led to the first two people who called in on their cell phones
could play Pong on the building.
This is awesome public art.
A few people at Noisebridge decided
it would be really cool to have a snapshot of the planet.
250 dollars - that's all it took -
and six weeks later,
they put up a balloon into near space and got this picture.
They documented it all online.
And after hundreds of more balloon launches
at hackerspaces around the world,
the documentation is now easy enough
that high school students can do this
totally on their own and win science fairs,
which just happened a few months ago.
This and other things
led to the International Hackerspace Space Program
with the very ambitious goal of a hacker on the Moon by the year 2023.
Will we make that goal?
It doesn't matter.
Think of all that will be gained and learned along the way,
just like the first space program.
It will be cool to see.
MakerBot is a 3D printer.
This all grew from one person at NYC Resistor in New York,
thinking it would be really cool to have a robot that he made
that would make things.
And this grew to a very successful 3D printer company.
It can print out anything, any object from your imagination
into a real thing you can hold in plastic.
And they have an online website
where anyone can upload and download any object,
and they can print it out at a MakerBot or any other 3D printers around.
These are cheap enough
that every hackerspace pretty much in the world has one,
and lots of other people.
As well as 3D printers,
a lot of hackerspaces have laser cutters.
And these are very sophisticated machines.
You can cut very intricate precision parts to make sophisticated projects.
On the other hand,
these few people at Hive 76 in Philadelphia
decided they would just make business cards
by engraving their company business
on thin, dried slices of meat.
It was popular enough that a lot of other people wanted -
now they have a company that they do it for other people.
This is pretty awesome.
Some people at Artisan's Asylum in the Boston area
thought it would be really cool to ride on top of giant robots.
And they're building this thing now.
This is 1,800 pounds, and it's big enough to walk over cars.
Last year, after the disaster in Fukushima in Japan,
people were very dissatisfied with all of the lack of information
coming from the Japanese government,
so the Tokyo Hackerspace made do-it-yourself Geiger counters
that they would give away,
and people everywhere could measure radiation levels.
One problem, however,
is that no one knew what normal radiation levels were.
So, people in CRASH Space, hackerspace in LA,
started Safecast, a non-profit group,
where they would give away these do-it-yourself Geiger counters
to anyone in the world,
and it would automatically upload all the radiation information
to an open-source database that anyone can use for any purpose
for the rest of the internet eternity, hopefully.
And this is citizen science in action.
One of the ways hackerspaces innovate
is taking things that have been traditionally up till now very expensive
and making them inexpensive and accessible.
I think we're going to be learning more about this later,
but BioCurious is a biology hackerspace in the San Francisco area,
and people there made an open PCR
so that now it's an open-source PCR machine
that anyone can replicate DNA on their desktop.
And finally, this is Code Hero. It came out of Noisebridge.
It's a really fun computer game with intense graphics
that anyone, any skill level, any age can play this game
and just by playing it,
learn to program and make their own computer games.
Well, these are just a few, very few of the many, many incredible projects
that come out of hackerspaces
growing simply by people doing what they love.
And ...
there are many things that grow from hackerspaces
that can improve your life and improve the lives of people around the world.
There are two things that I want to point out
that I think are very important.
One is that real education happens at hackerspaces.
As the education bureaucracies around the world continue to fail us,
hackerspaces will continue to fill in more of the void,
where people teach because they love teaching,
where people learn because they love learning -
all geared towards living the life you want to live.
And secondly,
local economy grows at hackerspaces.
Hackerspaces provide supportive community for exploring and doing what you love.
And think about it.
If you do what you love,
chances are really good other people are going to love it too.
And in a capitalist society,
if people love what you do, they will pay you to do it.
Many companies have grown this way,
including mine.
And if your company grows and you need help,
you can hire from the local community.
This creates local economy that works for everyone.
The future of economy everywhere is creative.
And hackerspaces are a fantastic place to explore your creativity.
So,
there are many ...
Well, let me say this:
I hope you see now that hackerspaces really are cool.
And I hope you may want to check one out.
There may be one near you.
Just simply check online and see.
If there's not one near you,
start one!
It's the only way hackerspaces happen.
It's the only way they've ever happened: people like you started them.
So get to it.
Your hometown needs a hackerspace.
And there's no right and wrong way to do it -
just whatever works for you.
There's so many ways to do it.
I'm going to show you one example that it's near and dear to me:
Noisebridge, which I co-founded.
We are a nonprofit, consensus decision-making.
We have one rule and one rule only,
which is, "Be excellent to each other."
Membership is open to anyone, any age,
but you don't need to be a member to do anything at Noisebridge
nor to be a member to take classes.
You don't need to be a member to teach classes.
You don't need to be a member to use all of our tools.
You don't even need to be a member to have a key at Noisebridge.
I happen to have some Noisebridge keys here.
If anyone wants one,
(Sounds of keys dropping)
see me afterwards, and take one.
And please use it.
I am totally serious: you are always welcome at Noisebridge.
And wherever you go, please look up the local hackerspace -
I have a lot of keys -
online.
These are the 1,106 hackerspaces that exist now in the world,
listed on hackerspaces.org.
Wherever you go, whenever you travel,
please look up and visit the local hackerspace.
You are invited to do so.
Meet new friends.
Explore and create community that works for you.
We all need community to thrive in our lives.
At hackerspaces around the world,
we have found ways of creating community that works.
The world is looking to us.
At hackerspaces,
we have supportive community for exploring what you love.
If we choose to do what we love,
our lives get better.
If we choose to share it with others, the lives of those around us get better.
If enough of us do this, the world gets better.
It is up to you, and you alone,
what you choose to do with the time of your life.
Please, choose well.
(Applause)