The Fourth Place

I just read a thread started by Michael Zeltner on the London Hack Space group and assimilated the linked monochrom article.

Interesting points raised and I can’t dispute the history, but it seems to me that Monochrom (and I think also Zeltner)  sees hackspaces as a blank canvas onto which the (mostly left-wing) politics of the age are creatively drawn, and from which information is read by those nasty exploitative capitalists. Such an enterprise does need to agree on its purpose and destination in the way advocated by Monochrom, because otherwise the content of the canvas will be a complete mess, leading (in the real rather than the analogous world) to an unpleasant and fractious cultural space.

I thought I was helping to create a paint brush or a set of tools, capable of being used in a neutral and open way by any one friendly enough to turn up and get on with it without being an ass hole. I believed people would work on different canvases chosen by those individuals and any project groups they form as they socialise together in the space.  Some might work on their own web sites, perhaps even commercially while at the hack space as certainly happened at meetings #4 and #5. I contributed for selfish commercial reasons to an open project run by a major media company, but was friendy and sociable to the point of distraction while in “the space”. Others are working on kit to use in their own homes.  I’m sure others will get together and work on grander visions involving more people, even all of society, though I think that will take time to start happening. This latter model does not need a political direction or even a shared belief system, in relies on people with shared interests getting together and being sociable while using the facilities of the space.

Zeltner and Monocrom both approach the culture of hackspaces from what I would call (noting that my post 9/11 political awakening is still relatively recent) a collectivist meta-context and end-up ascribing collectivist features to it. Zelter reveals this when he calls setting up a space a political act and Monochrom likewise in his references to capitalists and capitalism as if they are something “other” than whatever it is he labels himself*. I wonder whether, if the factual history and consequent semantic baggage of the phrase “hacker space” is somehow unavoidably collectivist and whether I will find myself accidentally supporting a de facto left-wing political group of which I cannot approve. The rumours of funding from a certain assuredly left-wing media organisation does nothing to counter this impression.

I realise of course, that I have also ascribed features of the libertarian meta-context I was born with to the culture I expected to see formed at the London Hack Space. The description I gave above of a group of individuals united socially by accident of the facilities they enjoy and voluntarily uniting ad-hoc is basically the way I’d like my nation to be run, writ small. I would argue though, that this model of running a space – be it a country or a communal workshop – is superior exactly because it doesn’t matter if groups within the whole want to work on commercial, personal or communal projects as long as they respect the needs of every other individual sufficiently. The country, or the hackspace is a political entity in this model to exactly the same extent that a shop or a pub is political – not very political at all, but rather cultural or just social.

That all sounds very grand, but what it amounts to is turning up, getting on with whatever it is you want to get on with for whatever reason it is you want to do that, and getting on nicely with the others – exactly what has happened at every gathering so far.

Long may it continue.

* I realise I am anthropomorphising the group, but whatever…

Today, I sat down on the tube next to a gentleman on my left and leaving space for an approaching lady to sit to my right. Eventually the lady sat down one seat away on the right so I had her, the gentlemen and a three ladies in front of me and to the left of the gentleman, the rest of the carriage was mostly empty but as the train drew away everyone seemed comfortable and there was no atmosphere.

What happened next was very interesting, but first you must understand that I hadn’t actually showered so I could understand if somebody decided I was a bit stinky. Though the gentleman directly on the left seemed entirely tolerant of my existence, as was everyone else.

Then, I reached into my bag and got a book out.

I had two books, on software and religion, but I chose to read the book on religion, which espouses a point of view with which I am somewhat sympathetic. Though I admit, some aspects of some religions make me uncomfortable I have never really proselytised my own views and try to be tolerant and express an interest in other belief systems and the cultures that go with them. I don’t often think about the topic, and am certainly not a religious practitioner, so this is probably the first time I’ve read a book on religion in public.

So what happened? Well a few seconds after I opened the book, the lady one seat away to the right, who certainly did have the option to sit further away earlier on, decided to stand up and move down about one third the length of the carriage. I instantly suspected I was smelly, or had burped or sniffed in a disgusting way, but looking around I saw the confused faces of the other passengers in this little cluster and they all seemed sufficiently surprised to rule that out. The next thing I thought of was the book and as soon as I started examining the back cover – necessarily exposing the front cover – the other faces become less confused, and returned to their own business. Had the book, who’s title was visible on the back cover, made this woman move away? Wow!

I can’t think of any other reasons why this lady would have moved away, and the fact that she had brown skin and my skin and the skin of the author are both white reinforces the reason somewhat since religion often divides – I believe – along the lines of skin colour. So yes, it probably was the book. Er… Wow!

I’m a white male living in 2008 in a polyglot and cosmopolitan city where the traditional culture matches my own cultural upbringing. The historic cultural backdrop of London matches the Christian cultural backdrop I was bought up in. Why should an atheist with such a background experience such extreme religious intolerance simply for reading Richard Dawkins? The book has a scientific slant on the topic and neither science or atheism were – I thought – especially uncommon in London.

Wow… simply moving away demonstrates a high level of intolerance. I would generally define intolerance as murder and arson, and I am neither murdered nor burnt from my home, but on a relative scale this was somewhat more than the none at all I’m used to or the nearly none I feel for others. Yet putting tolerance aside, isn’t it pretty closed minded to assume that a book that is opposed to the existence of God is necessarily intolerable? and that a person reading an intolerable book is himself intolerable? Jesus Christ!