Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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There used to be a place in the Bay Area called "a clean well lighted place for books" which was a book store (of course) but it was also a pretty decent place to hang out. Of course talking and reading were fun (sort of a library without the librarian shhing you all the time) but I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented.

Of course you would need something to hack on and I figured a wall of various embedded systems connected together in various ways so that you would have write code on the outer ones to talk to the inner ones etc.

What we got though were maker spaces, which when they work have a pretty cool vibe but sometimes it's like hanging out with a bunch of ghosts or something. All going about their business, not joining in or starting conversations etc. That was why I thought an ice breaker type activity like the wall of systems would be an interesting idea. Sort of like putting a puzzle out on the table at a dinner party. A safe reason to be hanging out.

Some day I keep thinking I'll build something like that.

"A safe reason to be hanging out."

That really cuts to the heart of it -- I've always had a 'disability' where I am immensely social if I have an 'excuse' and just abysmal without one. Seeding the environment somehow would make all the difference for me; wonder to what degree it's generalizeable?

For example, I like hiking. But it's not enough of an excuse for me to be social.

I keep having the idea of setting up a community Linux server: you have to be in a certain geographic region to get a shell account. I think it'd be a fun way to meet people, in a classic hacker setting.

> I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented.

Isn't this exactly a hacker space? Well...besides the clean part.

There are two ways in which the bookstore differed from the current implementation of hacker spaces; ad-hoc local usage (book browsing), and commercial activity (book buying).

The hacker spaces I've been too have all shared a common "mode" which is "bring your stuff and we'll work in the same room." The allure being the social aspects and the interactions with other people interested in your space. But that has two problems, generally "moving" your space from where you work to the hacker space (for small embedded projects that is really hard), and for software projects they aren't necessarily "shared" any better in a social context other than IRC.

Hence the idea of the 'hack wall' which would be some common infrastructure that everyone would be able to see and work with (from a distance on their computers) and a common understanding of the opportunity and constraints. My thesis is that this is what the jigsaw puzzle does as a party, anyone can share in working on it, skilled or unskilled. At a conference I attended there was a similar sort of idea with "craft sticks" (aka popsicle sticks) and hot glue guns, but I think the need to be "artsy" was intimidating some people.

In my imagination the wall would be constructed somewhat like sections in a garden railroad might be, where each square would have some standard requirements, like power on the corners, 3.3v data busses, RS-423 connections, and maybe a serial port. And you could put squares together using something like 80/20 extrusions, then jumper across to the "standard" connectors, and each square would have a page in a local gitlab server which described its makeup. So to talk to an inner square you would have to create interfaces from the outer squares (which might all have a RasPi on them) to get to the inner squares.

I've only been to two hacker spaces, one in SF and one in HK. Both had hardware there to hack on, workshops for using various hardware tools, workshops on security, biohacking, etc. I preferred my own hardware, but I found the communal hardware and others projects fascinating.

I also wasn't too productive, but that's because I was busy meeting people and checking out their work.

Yes, but why would I want to go to a hacker space, I have plenty of toys at home.

The excuse to go to the bookstore was to see what new books had come in.

Since this is in the comment thread of The Science of Making Friends...to share your toys and make friends?

The bookstore provided extra reasons why someone might go there other than just to explicitly meet people. People do have different personality types [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion

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