Today is the day I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.
Today, in the SU, about 30 electrical engineers, computer science students, professional software developers, photography geeks, penetration testers, system administrators and anyone else interested, will come together to hack.
Today, we’re going to find out if it actually works; there is nothing planned, nothing prepared, and nothing expected. All we have is a FB group, FB event, Hackerspaces.org Wiki, and a few IRC conversations.
Oh, and alot of kindly donated equipment by members.
Once we get set up, we’ll be streaming, well, down there…
Wish us luck if you can’t be with us, and check us out if you’re free today.
7
Apr 11
Why Belfast Needs a Hackerspace
I was sitting in Sinnamon on the Stranmillis Road, enjoying a coffee, a sausage roll, and my Kindle, reading the latest 2600. One article immediatly stood out to me, ‘A World Spinning’. The main focus of the article was the world-changing domino effect, toppling regimes across the middle east, all caused by one, little textfile. The textfile in question was a US Embassy cable highlighting the indemic corruption in the (ex) Tunisian Government. As most know, this leak was from WikiLeaks; a rag-tag loosely knit chaotic alliance of hackers across the globe, all with the the same general aim to allow open and plain discourse and stopping governments across the globe from hiding secrets from their citizenry; big secrets and small…
Of course, as with most things to do with hackers, the aim isn’t that simple; having spoken to some of those involved, it was abundantly clear that some elements within Wikileaks purely want to screw with governments that (they feel have) wronged them, but others are simply motivated by the cat-and-mouse challenge of acquiring, validating, securing and releasing information in a hostile environment.
Its this kind of spectrum that makes me wish that I could just fastforward a year or so (or much longer), to a point where Belfast Hackerspace is established, stable, self-funding, and growing. Innovation only comes from discourse, and the best innovations (in my opinion) come from differences.
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