Hackerbases

[AxelHeyst]

I stumbled across a few interesting leads today I thought worth link-dumping. TIL:

Europe was on to organized and dedicated hackerspaces before North America. American hackers traveled to a big hacker event in Europe in 2007 to learn. One of the presentations was Design Patterns for building and maintaining hackerspaces.

Hackerbases are a thing. Hackerbases are hackerspaces where (some) people can live. Like coop living + hackerspace. This obviously cranks the potential for social conflict up much higher, and vanilla hackerspace conflict potential is not zero to begin with. There is a 'why, though?' question to answer.

Also, permaculture based eco hackerfarms are a thing, although it's unclear how many are viably operating. Arguably the place I stayed at in Portugal last year is a proto-example, although they self-described as an offgrid fabfarm and the only residents were workawayers and the host family... Post 1 and post 2 if interested. It was run more like a hacker-dictatorship, to be honest, but the infrastructure was cool.

hackerspace.Gent published a 'How to run a hackerspace' manual after their space almost imploded due to interpersonal conflict. The whole doc is interesting but I'll point out that they run 'do-ocracy' governance instead of democracy or consensus, with formal decision-making systems as backup when the do-ocracy doesn't cover it.

Do-ocracy is an organizational structure in which individuals choose to pick up roles and execute tasks by themselves, rather than getting them appointed by others. Responsibilities and authority are attached to people who do the work, rather than to the elected/selected officials. Doing a task is in itself justification for you being the person who does that job.

--

I think this is interesting and potentially relevant because hackers and ERE types have more overlapping personality tendencies than e.g. ecovillage sdGreen types.

Anyone know of other information/experience in this space to share?

[AxelHeyst]

The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of current technologies to achieve novel and clever outcomes.

EREites and hackers are cousins: EREites enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of current lifestyle defaults and flows of wealth/capital in society to achieve novel and clever outcomes like extreme early retirement, freedom-of-action, globally equitable consumption levels, DIY tenure...

[Slevin]

The do-ocracy is now my favorite form of small scale organization. It generally aligns with how I think things should be done, and I've actually been looking at a good way for describing it, which seems to have already been done in the manual. I'm certain this will appeal a lot more to "hacker" types like myself (In the sense that I like to take everything apart, see how it works, and then use the bits of it to do new stuff) than those trying to do precise things, but I've been very pro agency / "lowering the bar to getting things done", and trying to find ways to infect the others around me with agency.

[jacob]

A do-ocracy (yay, new terms) seems very similar to how things are run in [many] smaller theoretical physics research groups. Also compare to Yellow leadership (https://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/yellow/ you might have to click the tab for leadership).

The "leader"'s job is to reiterate a grand vision for the place. The vision is what holds the system together so everybody is working more or less in the same direction, e.g. "a better web browser". The other leader job is to act as a janitor and clear up snags and obstacles and make connections at the higher levels. The leader's job is generally not to tell people what or how to do.

However, this requires only including people who are competent and very self-directed(*) (the typical hacker). Otherwise, it falls apart.

Unlike consensus or voting, competence determines arguments. In STEM it's usually easy to determine who has more insight into a problem. One informed person can be more right than a hundred fools. In softer fields, this may be a lot harder.

Responsibility is tied to ownership and ownership is tied to credit. This is best explained by the author-list. In general, everybody who interacted with the paper is an author. However, typically the first author did 90-95% of the work, the second author was a big help and maybe did 5% of the work. The next 3-(N-1) authors did the last 5% and the last author is the boss leader above.

(*) I think this is a general problem when it comes to designing for governance. Everything gets a lot easier with "quality people". This is why the "third way" or alternative to people with their own oxygen masks learning to put them on others and community-oriented people learning to put on their own mask first... is "ego development" (basically the diagonal).

[mountainFrugal]

www.noisebridge.net - Long running hackerspace in the Mission District in SF. They have a lot written about how they make decisions and lessons learned over the years. It also survived the pandemic which was the buy your way in over competence "Makerspace" killer.

I was never a member of Noisebridge, but did participate in a number of meet-ups. They have one rule, "Be Excellent". The rest follows from that. It is a place where you can have (literal) white collar workers with their sleeves rolled up jamming on a project with their kids directly next to a ripe B.O. gutter punk jamming on another project. Worth a visit next time you visit SF.

While technically not a "Hackerbase" (no live-ins), it is still a good model for how to run something like this.

[7Wannabe5]

Super interesting. I wonder if there is any consciousness in terms of how "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" relates to "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction"? Clearly, I am now going to have to add it to my stack.

Obviously, also relates to Hanzi's observation that "hippies, hackers, and hipsters" are the types coalescing towards Level Yellow. These 3 types could also be seen as being representative of threads of rural, virtual, and urban space coming together in finger-like growth.

My personal community project/problem might be described as how to move my extended FOO, which is largely composed of extremely competent hipsters more towards "hippie" and/or "hacker."

This speaks to the fact that there is likely to be a good deal of resonance between "working consensus on grand vision" and realms of extreme competency of members of do-ocracy. For simple example, the success of Potluck Church Picnic depends on individual competency in baking pies and casseroles, but also intuition based on experience in gauging whether another pie vs a 3 bean salad might be more valuable contribution, but it doesn't depend on the ability to gain consensus that Potluck Church Picnic is a worthwhile undertaking.

When I lived in loosely governed co-op of around 30, there were at least 3 or 4 different divisions of tasks/problems:

1) Ongoing maintenance tasks. Who will cook dinner for the group of 30 every Tuesday? Who will clean the upstairs bathroom once/week?
2) One time projects such as refinishing all of the wooden flooring in the house, throwing a party, or commissioning a cool welded sculpture for the roof.
3) Boundary problems. Should violent when drunk Russian guy friend of several residents be banned from the premises? Why is there an old guy who is not paying rent living in the unfinished attic?
4) Internal problems. We are short on dishes in the kitchen, because somebody has disgusting collection of 30 dirty dishes in her room. Somebody pooped in the bathtub!

I'd say it would qualify as a semi-democratic do-ocracy. For instance, when I first joined, I picked my maintenance job which was cooking dinner twice a week with another member, but when I was judged to be competent (super-skilled at yummy vegetarian alternatives), nobody objected to my request to cook just once a week on my own instead. Leadership was voted in, but held very little power, and was held responsible for boundary maintenance tasks such as dealing with the drunk Russian guy, and risked being removed from position in meeting convened by rough consensus if solution was along the lines of "lock the drunk/violent Russian guy into the space between the two sets of glass entry doors and leave him to thrash there like a caged animal on display."

Overall, it was a super fun place to live, and I was recently considering joining a similar co-op that included older adults and a productive garden space with single room rent set at $725/month including meals. I think I paid around $325/month including meals in the late 1980s in basically same relatively HCOL above average IQ location. Initially you had to share a room, but with seniority you obtained a single for same price.

[xmj]

Thanks for exposing me to the do-ocracy concept. It is useful and would seem to run everything around me (consultancy partnership; most social clubs; housing associations; etc)

[Slevin]

Super interesting. I wonder if there is any consciousness in terms of how "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" relates to "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction"? Clearly, I am now going to have to add it to my stack.

Yes. Design pattern language from software development is a direct line from the book by Christopher Alexander.

[7Wannabe5]

@Slevin:

Gotcha. Peter Bane’s “Permaculture Handbook” applies pattern language to permaculture.

[chenda]

I don't think I could live in such a place, I'm too introverted and socially inept.

I'd prefer to be the village wise women, living on the outskirts of the village and occasionally frequented by young people looking for magic spells and life advice in return for a ration of coffee or something.

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

That would be Pattern 78: House for One Person or Pattern 155: Old Age Cottage or Pattern 154: Teenager's Cottage. I'm okay with just Pattern 141: A Room of One's Own. Although it is the most financially advantageous, I find sharing housing just with a SO to be the most social/autonomy confining, although the form of social/autonomy confinement depends on whether SO is more introverted or more extroverted than me. Living alone definitely has its upside in terms of autonomy, but it adds expense at the base level and further expense if/when you have to go out in order to socialize. In an amenable group housing situation (inclusive of some conventional family groupings), I can work/relax in my own room, walk in my socks to the Pattern 139: Farmhouse Kitchen or Pattern 163: Outdoor Room to socialize with variety of others, and create/share a (or several)Pattern 136: Couple's Realm at the same location or elsewhere. I do prefer to be the one making decisions related to Pattern 172: Garden Growing Wild, but, as with the kitchen and much else in life, this can often be functionally achieved by simply doing the most work (until somebody else shows up with power tools .)

[jacob]

One downside to do-ocracy is "becoming known as the only one who knows how to fix the printer". Once that happens, printer responsibility takes over. Nobody else has an incentive to learn how the printer works. Some even think that asking for help with the printer is a good way to connect.

There's a difference between "doing a task" and "being able to do a task". There are many humans who have no interest in doing anything but the minimum. These are not hackers. Rather than doing better the next time, they figure they can just ask again. Before Eternal September, they were called lamers.

[7Wannabe5]

True, but on some other end of the spectrum there exist the humans sometimes referred to as aggro/irritable-control-freaks, who create a self-fulfilling prophecy of nobody else being able to fix the printer by insisting that the task is only correctly performed in accordance with their exacting algorithm and to their no-accounting-for-opportunity-cost-or-second-order-effects standards. For instance, I have definitely had neighbors who believed that I was a "lamer" on lawn care due to not applying chemicals or watering in a drought. Jordan Peterson would likely think I was a "lamer" on parenting if I didn't spank a child who misbehaved in public setting. Etc. etc. etc.

Also, in the realm of co-dependency there are generally at least as many eager "fixers" as "incompetents." IOW, there are many humans who think that offering to fix the printer for you when you didn't ask is a good way to form a connection. Of course, at some level this is just harmless flirtation. For instance, the recently immigrated gentlemen who after inquiring about my permaculture projects suggested "I make hobby with you?"

[daylen]

Could also be seen as the difference between assuming as a group the precautionary principle versus the ask-for-forgiveness principle. A do-ocracy asking for forgiveness, and some kind of don't-do-ocracy being precautionary about some set of outcomes. In some sense any do-ocracy is also a don't-do-ocracy (although perhaps not explicitly in their rule-book). In that the group requires a fairly constrained view of what counts as a productive step towards the collective vision. By contrast, any series of doings that are seen as heterotelic towards the vision may get selected out by taking away responsibilities. In some extreme cases of this kind of dynamic scaling up into the form of a government over a local region, this can become fascist-leaning fairly quickly. Though, clearly on a small and constrained scale of influence, do-ocracy's/don't-do-ocracy's tend to be highly effective in pushing a particular cultural front. In their absence, systematized incompetence will reign.

Though, on a smaller scale below the dunbar limit where a diversity of personalities are entangled to the point of being semi-independent / semi-dependent on each other, everyone is in some sense just doing what they do based on the overall dynamics of the group. For instance in a family setting, the older generations may ask the younger generations for help on the current technology while the younger generations may ask the older generations about their stories and first-hand experiences.

[jacob]

In that the group requires a fairly constrained view of what counts as a productive step towards the collective vision.

This is why Yellow has a leader who is responsible for providing a vision and keeping it on track. A lack of a common vision/"all visions are equally valid" is one of Green's weaknesses and possibly a major reason why Yellow emerges out of the ashes of "group work eventually going nowhere".

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

Absolutely agree, but what then distinguishes a leader at Yellow from, for instance, Genghis Khan with a vision at Level Red? IMO, the "servant-leader" or "process facilitator"profile that is frequently offered up is either kind of still too Green or just B.S.

[jacob]

@jacob:

Absolutely agree, but what then distinguishes a leader at Yellow from, for instance, Genghis Khan with a vision at Level Red? IMO, the "servant-leader" or "process facilitator"profile that is frequently offered up is either kind of still too Green or just B.S.

A Red chief is simply the guy who has won (defeated) the most. He does what he wants. If anyone disagrees, he defeats them. If they defeat him, they become the new chief.

A Green "process facilitator" has no vision. Indeed, if he has one he might step back or keep it to himself so as not to dominate the collective envisioning. Unfortunately, the collective struggles with defining a singular vision since, after all, everybody has their own and equally valid ideas. This makes it hard to square the engineering triangle.

A Yellow "boss janitor" has a clear vision and a clear idea of the engineering triangle. The yellow leader's role is to explain the system of the vision. Group members tend fill in the blanks according to their initiative and/or competence. The Yellow leader explains what needs to be done. Not who or how to do it.

[Frita]

@7W5
In my experience working in academia and K-12, it seems that red in green’s clothing is common. I have yet to experience anything who claims to be a “servant leader” who was not downright abusive. While worker bee reds comply or battle, greens go along to get along, classic codependence.

@Jacob
It seems that even yellows can sometimes do for others what they could do for themselves, though perhaps with less frequency. At what point in SD, does codependency no longer become a potential issue?

[zbigi]

I've seen a fair amount of Green leaders in corporate software development. They were usually checked out of the job, and/or just genuinely didn't have any good ideas (because their understanding of what we're doing was insufficient), and also knew that forcing their own vision means owning it if it fails. "Facilitating", on the other hand, is a job with way less responsibility, you just become a combination of a kindergarden teacher (breaking up the fights etc.) and a janitor - with a salary of a director.

[jacob]

@7W5
In my experience working in academia and K-12, it seems that red in green’s clothing is common. I have yet to experience anything who claims to be a “servant leader” who was not downright abusive. While worker bee reds comply or battle, greens go along to get along, classic codependence.

Green with Red is also called "Boomeritis", which Wilber ascribes to narcissism+postmodernism, but I see more as a general issue of [egocentric] Kegan2 interpretations of any value meme resulting in a fundamentalist version---the warrior interpretation. That may be the same thing just by other words. However, "partisanship" is especially attractive to immature ego-development, because it's simpler to adopt a vMeme in its simpler and more fundamentalist form. As people get older, they either become more nuanced OR they double-down and become leaders of a new generation of young warrior-types.

Kegan2 is an inescapable issue with every system must have a way of dealing with it and preventing it from taking over. For red, Kegan2 is a feature rather than a bug. Further colors along the spiral all seem to play with this power hoping they can somehow control it to their ends. For example, in politics, the red-tinted are those who show up at elections or are out there canvassing and trolling. Even for yellow, red is the do-or-die mindset that push the ideas through, when yellow itself would otherwise become cynical and focus more on understanding failure-modes as just being part of the system.

@Jacob
It seems that even yellows can sometimes do for others what they could do for themselves, though perhaps with less frequency. At what point in SD, does codependency no longer become a potential issue?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Let me try to describe it w/o using the "dependence"-word. Culture oscillates between collective-orientation aka cold colors and individual-orientation aka warm colors. The cold colors connect with each other based on who they are. For purple, it's family. For blue it's religion. For green, it's having [human] feelings. The warm colors connect with each other based on what they have. For red, it's power. For orange, it's wealth. For yellow, it's ideas.

There's dependence in both cold and warm. For example, money (orange) depends on others to make it valuable. Otherwise, it's just little pieces of paper. Power (red) depends on others respecting the power. Otherwise, it becomes impotent. Ideas are worth little if nobody else understands them. Whereas in the cold colors, codependence is practically part of one's identity. Without my family/church/community I am nothing. I must be part of the [in]-group lest I die.