Seems that hackerspaces are following a similar trajectory as coworking spaces, up and to the right fast. Both are crucibles where work and our economy are being reinvented. I see them as nodes in an emerging global economic network that’s run by free agents and small enterprises that embrace sharing, collaboration, inclusiveness, and sustainability as core values. They’re also one of the few places where the values and practices of net culture are lived out in the real world day in and day out.
The Internet is helping to fuel their growth by increasing awareness, but there’s also a deeper driver. The cost of the tools to produce and distribute digital and physical products are dropping to levels that allow individuals and small groups to do what only large organizations could do just a few years ago. This is a well-explored thesis in Kevin Carson’s, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low Overhead Manifesto. Thousands of new projects are being formed in hackerspaces and coworking spaces where folks get access to tools, collaborators, knowledge, and increasingly financing (see Hub Ventures).
Find a hackerspace near you here, and get to it, whatever it is you want to make, you can probably do it with a little help from friends.
