HackMeet: Interview with the Organizers
October 24th, 2011
Before leaving HackMeet 2011 I had opportunity to interview three of the core organizers. Greg, Mark and Janky all took the time to speak with me.
Regarding my observation that HackMeet appeared to be a social anarchist hacker meetup Janky told me, “HackMeet is not specifically anarchist. We’re all anarchists and we organize things, but the focus is on activism for anyone who is combating the state in one way or another.” In fact, the organizers of both HackMeet and the Noisebridge hackerspace are social anarchists, but both are open to all audiences.
Greg told me, “Most anarchists you meet are social anarchists, and most hackers you meet are libertarians. On the surface they may look like the same groups but the conflict comes down when you talk about things like free markets.” Greg went on, “hackers want to see a more free society and they see technology as the way to do that. The anarchist thinks that the way to do that is to combat the state by whatever means makes sense.” There’s actually more agreement and overlap between these groups in cyberspace than you’d think. Social anarchists and market anarchists may philosophically disagree about physical property, but since most hacktivism occurs in the realm of information, and both groups tend to agree about intellectual property and the free software movement, there is more to find in common.
HackMeet takes a very broad definition of hacking. Whereas one generally thinks of hacking as intrusion into computer systems, Greg said, “For example, I’ve hacked a toaster before, which means that I fixed it.” The conference included talks on hardware, security, privacy, mobile app development and even workshops on lockpicking. Very little was actually said about system intrusion. Greg added, “Self sufficiency is a major theme. As anti-statists we want to be independent from the state as much as we can, and be independent from large corporations such as Google and Facebook. Technology can help us do that.”
For monetary policy geeks like us here at Silver Circle Bitcoin is the most interesting thing out of the hacker world for us. Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer Internet currency that allows users to conduct online commerce anonymously like cash. But it wasn’t thought of as any kind of break through for the social anarchists. Greg told me, “it’s still a problem because instead of correlating your worth in dollars your just equating your worth with GPU processing power and that still creates a hierarchy.” In other words, it still offends the social anarchist rejection of capital. He added, “Maybe they are a freer currency for those who believe in the free market. But they don’t analyze the actual problem where life becomes a commodity.”
They call their organization a “Do-ocracy.” If you think it’s a good idea… do it. Noisebridge has weekly meetings run by a consensus process similar to the Occupy Movements. In fact, they say the consensus process at the Occupy General Assemblies were based on hacker groups like Anonymous and anarchist groups like AdBusters. In the future they hope to develop more hackerspaces and more hacker meetups. Mark concluded that they hoped, “to give activists the tools that they need to be more efficient and to give hackers the space to explore their ideas whether it be fighting for free software or fighting against the state.”
