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Empowering the hacker in us: a comparison of fab lab and hackerspace

ecosystems

Conference Paper · April 2014

DOI: 10.13140/2.1.4536.2881

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 Paper presented at the 5th LAEMOS (Latin American and European Meeting on Organization Studies)
Colloquium, Havana Cuba, 2‐5 April 2014

Empowering the hacker in us: a comparison of fab lab and

hackerspace ecosystems
Cameron Guthrie
Université de Toulouse, Toulouse Business School

Abstract
A large number of community based spaces for individual and social creation and production
have emerged over the past decade. The new and easy access these spaces provide to small
scale production technologies and specialized design and manufacturing knowledge has the
potential to empower individuals to bring about significant social change. We study two such
spaces, a hackerspace and a fab lab to improve our understanding of their role and influence
within the same urban area.

Keywords: fab lab, hackerspace, social entrepreneurship, ecosystem

Introduction
New spaces for individual creation, fabrication and artistic expression are emerging across the
globe. Whether they are tech shops, maker spaces, hackerspaces, hack labs or fab labs they all
enable individual production by providing both the physical tools, such as 3D printers and
laser cutters as well as a network of members who are willing to share their knowledge to help
others.

These spaces have emerged through the convergence of a number of phenomena such as the
availability of affordable digital manufacturing technologies, ubiquitous computing and
network technologies, a move towards active pedagogies and experiential learning, the open
source movements, distributed and collective innovation practices, ‘think local’ movements
and the DIY, hacking and maker cultures.

These spaces represent real opportunities to empower public entrepreneurship as they place
“the citizen rather than the consumer at the centre of our attention” (Hjorth, 2010, p. 3). They
are driven by the playful and creative nature of such entrepreneurship where an individual
finds the means of “actualizing what could come into being” (p.3). The collective nature of
these spaces allows individuals to realize projects that they would otherwise have not been
able to alone. They are “cooperative systems” where members are motivated “to contribute to
the collective effort instead of pursuing their own interests at the group’s expense” (Benkler,
2011, p. 8).

While tech shops and maker spaces emerged mainly from the DIY movement and
hackerspaces and hacker labs are anchored in the hacker culture, the position of fab labs is a
little more ambiguous. According to the fab lab charter, the objective of a fab lab is to enable
“invention by providing access to tools for digital fabrication”. Following Bloom and Dees
(2008) we advance that for these new spaces to make a lasting social impact they need to
understand and integrate their ecosystem. The difficulty for the fab lab movement lies in the

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complexity of its environment, being at the crossroads of a number of movements it has

multiple social stakeholders.

We undertake two case studies to explore how a hackerspace and a fab lab conceive and
integrate their ecosystem in the same urban area.

Fab labs, hackerspaces and individual production

A large number of community run creative spaces have emerged since the middle of the
2000s. The first hackerspace1 was launched in the USA in 2007, the first techshop was
launched in 2006 (nataliezdrieu, 2006) and the first fab lab emerged from MIT in 2003
(Gershenfeld, 2012). While techshops are privately run machine workshops, hackerspaces and
fab labs are open, community based spaces and will be the focus of this paper.

Hackerspaces are widely defined on hackerspaces.org as “community-operated physical

places, where people can meet and work on their projects”. The exact functioning of the space
varies from place to place and is determined by its members and while there is no blueprint or
set of guidelines to create a hackerspace, they generally follow a “hacker ethic”, which
“include freedom, in the sense of autonomy as well as of free access and circulation of
information; distrust of authority, that is, opposing the traditional, industrial top-down style of
organization; embracing the concept of learning by doing and peer-to-peer learning processes
as opposed to formal modes of learning; sharing, solidarity and cooperation” (Kostakis,
Niaros, & Giotitsas, 2014).

Fab labs were started by the Centre for Bits and Atoms at MIT as an outreach project. They
are governed by a charter authored by MIT that defines a fab lab as “a global network of local
labs, enabling invention by providing access to tools for digital fabrication […] Fab labs share
an evolving inventory of core capabilities to make (almost) anything, allowing people and
projects to be shared […] Fab labs are available as a community resource, offering open
access for individuals as well as scheduled access for programs”2.

The growth of these social creative spaces has been impressive with currently over 1000
hackerspaces3 and 260 fab labs4. The rapid development of these spaces can be explained by
the interaction of a number of factors including the availability of affordable digital
manufacturing technologies5, the mutation of the DIY community into a wider “maker”
movement6, the increasing pressure from social movements for new forms of organization,
production and consumption7, the growth of open source, open hardware and peer-production

1
The hackerspace movement began in Europe and in particular in Germany thirty years earlier (Tweney, 2009).
Other names are also used for hackerspaces including “hacker lab”, “maker space” and “hack lab”. Maxigas
(2012) differentiates between the hackerspaces and hack labs based on their different genealogies and that
hacklabs are typically based on a political agenda.
2
Source: http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/charter/
3
Source : http://hackerspaces.org. This number may include planned and inactive spaces.
4
Source: http://www.fabfoundation.org/fab‐labs/. This number may include planned and inactive FabLabs.
5
The Arduino microcontroller was launched in 2005 and the RepRap 3D printer was first released in 2007
6
Make magazine, launched in 2006 has a paid circulation of 125,000 today and organizes an annual Maker Fair
7
For example, the alter‐globalization movement and the 1999 Seattle WTO protests

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movements, the emergence of new models of innovation including “open innovation”8 and the
“consumer innovator” and changing consumption habits such as the increase in online user
generated content.

In the beginning “the hacklabs gave a technological advantage to grassroots political

movements, pioneering access to information and communication technologies and
innovative solutions in an era where access was not available to most people as a consumer
service” (Maxigas, 2012)9. More recently however hacking practices have been popularized
“and hacking-related cultural references and discourses are growing in terms of visibility
among new segments of the population, including not only software experts and computer
“geeks”, but also amateurs, laypersons and non-experts” (Magaudda, 2012).

Fab labs and hackerspaces are similar in a number of ways. Both provide access to a set of
resources allow for the realization of a wide variety of projects10, they both belong to a larger
network of similar spaces, they are open and accessible to the public and they encourage
sharing of knowledge and intellectual property.

Fab labs and hackerspaces are also both built around a membership base that can be called on
for advice or to collaborate on a project. They are places where cultures can meet (Snow,
1959) allowing different “communities of practice” to share knowledge and work together to
overcome the “symmetry of ignorance” (Rittel, 1972) caused by the distribution of design and
manufacturing knowledge across different communities.

Fischer and his colleagues argue that “rather than being a limiting factor, ‘symmetry of
ignorance’ can provide the foundation for social creativity. Bringing different points of view
together and trying to create a shared understanding among all stakeholders can lead to new
insights, new ideas, and new artifacts” (Fischer, 2001). Fab labs and hackerspaces are places
where such social creativity can emerge, and following Fischer who studied computer
mediated collaborative environments, we believe they encourage and empower “cultures of
participation” in which “all people are provided with the means to participate actively in
personally meaningful problems” (Fischer, 2013).

8
The term “open innovation” was popularized by Henri Chesbrough in his book Open Innovation: The new
imperative for creating and profiting from technology (Chesbrough, 2003) and “consumer innovator” by Eric
von Hippel in his research including his book Democratizing Innovation (Von Hippel, 2005).
9
The evolution of these spaces has been linked to that of political movements: “the students' revolt of 1969
was driven by the idea of taking back places and establishing a different psychogeography within the maze of
the city through détournement. Likewise, the autonomia movement of the late 1970s that came to life in Italy
and later influenced people in German‐speaking countries and the Netherlands was about appropriation of
spaces, be it for autonomous youth centres or appropriation of the airwaves for pirate radio” (Grenzfurthner &
Schneider, 2009).
10
A typical FabLab set up includes “a laser cutter for 2D/3D design and fabrication, a high precision milling
machine for making circuits and molds for casting, a vinyl cutter for making flexible circuits and crafts, a fairly
sophisticated electronics workbench for prototyping circuits and programming microcontrollers, and if you can
possibly find the funds, you’ll want the large wood routing machine for furniture and housing applications. We
are also testing fairly inexpensive, but robust and with fair resolution 3D printers”
(http://www.fabfoundation.org/fab‐labs/fab‐lab‐criteria/)

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In the design and fabrication processes, interaction and exchange is essential as each
participant possesses in depth knowledge of their own materials and processes. Highlighting
this symmetry of ignorance in the maker movement, Gross and Do (2009) explain :

“A potter must know clays and glazes and the various processes by which to prepare, form and
fire them. A clothing designer must know fabrics and fasteners, sizing, cutting and sewing.
Programmers too must know materials and processes: hardware and software and the procedure
by which code is designed, written, debugged and maintained. Mastery of materials and
processes—obtained through direct experience—is fundamental to making things in any
domain” (p.211)

As physical, community based places, fab labs and hackerspaces have the potential to
eliminate the temporal, spatial, technological and conceptual obstacles to social creativity
identified by Fischer (Fischer, 2004). We draw on Bloom and Dees (2008) ecosystem theory
of social entrepreneurship to examine how one fab lab and one hackerspace in the same urban
area create the conditions for individual creation and social creativity.

Social entrepreneurship and ecosystems

According to Bloom and Dees (2008) social entrepreneurs often need to shape their
environments to support their goals. They draw on and adapt organizational ecosystem theory
to propose an ecosystems framework of social entrepreneurship. Following Mair and Marti’s
(2006) definition of social entrepreneurship as “a process involving the innovative use and
combination of resources to pursue opportunities to catalyze social change and/or address
social needs” (p.3), we consider fab labs and hackerspaces to be forms of social
entrepreneurship. They provide places that address social needs and empower those with a
desire for change.

Ecosystem theory has gained traction in the management literature as a tool for formulating
business strategy (Iansiti & Levien, 2004) and anticipating the impacts of innovation (Adner,
2006) since any change brought about by an organization implies an accompanying change or
resistance in its ecosystem. This is particularly true for social entrepreneurs who are often
trying to solve structural social problems. To create long lasting change, social entrepreneurs
must “understand and often alter the social system that creates and sustains the problems in
the first place. This social system includes all of the actors – the friends, foes, competitors,
and even the innocent bystanders – party to the problem, as well as the larger environment –
the laws, policies, social norms, demographic trends, and cultural institutions – within which
the actors play” (Bloom & Dees, 2008, p. 47).

We adopt Bloom and Dees framework to study how a hackerspace and a fab lab perceive their
environment and seek to modify their ecosystem to bring about change. Fab lab ecosystems
have been previously studied by (Troxler, 2010). In a study of study of ten fab labs from the
United States of America, Colombia, Spain, Iceland, The Netherlands, and Norway, he found
that while fab lab managers believed that they were a “part of a commons-based community
of grass-root innovation”, ecosystems were limited to few network and industry partners and
sponsors and only a small number of projects used the fab lab ecosystem for support. The
ecosystem approach can help better understand how and why these spaces build and interact

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with their environment and what affect these interactions have on individual creation and
social creativity.

The first step in Bloom and Dees framework involves defining the intended impact of an
enterprise, as well as the series of steps that will allow it to realize that impact. The second
step involves identifying the various parts of the ecosystem that do or could influence the
entrepreneur’s ability to create and sustain an impact, including the different “players” and the
“environmental conditions”. A presentation of the different elements in the ecosystem
framework is provided in appendix 1.

Once the ecosystem is understood, there are two paths for creating systemic change. The first
entails changing one or more of the environmental conditions that shape the behavior of
players in the ecosystem. This may involve “creating new public policy and regulations,
establishing markets and changing the ways existing markets operate, establishing new
cultural norms and social dynamics, and building new infrastructure” (Bloom & Dees, 2008,
p. 52). The second path involves introducing new practices, organizational structures and
business models to establish new behaviors in the ecosystem.

Methodology and data collection

We used a case study approach to compare the ecosystems of hackerspace and a fab lab in the
same urban area. The case study approach was considered appropriate as it allows the
researcher to deliberately consider contextual conditions (Yin, 1994, p. 13) that are necessary
to describe an organization’s ecosystem. Data was collected through interviews, observation
and documentary analysis. The hackerspace preferred to have members answer the
researcher’s questions through a shared online document. Four anonymous members of the
hackerspace responded to ten questions, in some cases reacting to the replies from the other
members.

The fab lab and the hackerspace were the only such spaces in the urban area. They are both
associative, they organize regular weekly meetings to bring members together, they both
receive a certain amount of support from local structures that allows them to survive and they
both organize public conferences. The urban area was a large French city of around 1 million
inhabitants.

We will first present the fab lab and then the hackerspace.

Case 1 : The fab lab

The fab lab was founded in 2009 and was awarded the “fab lab MIT” label in 2010. It began
as an initiative in a suburban basement before moving to its present 750m2 inner city location.
It shares floor space with an association that rents out co-working spaces to designers and
craftsmen. The fab lab is equipped with two laser cutters (40W and 100W), 4 personal 3D
printers and one digital milling machine.

The fab lab is open six days a week and encourages members to use the lab’s resources and
meet every Monday evening. Once a month a small number of projects are presented and to

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other members who are invited to participate in them. Between 80 and 100 members attend
these monthly presentations. Membership has grown from 50 to 500 over the past 2 years.

The fab lab is partially funded by membership dues and time charged for machine use to both
members and non-members. The majority of its financing comes from public sources
including the local municipality and the French government. The ecosystem for the fab lab is
presented in figure 1 below.

The co-founder describes the fab lab’s main impact as popularizing digital manufacturing
tools and knowledge.

“The fab lab’s role is to educate and provide access. Another goal is to popularize innovation in
so far as it was complicated twenty years ago. Anyone who needs to make something physical
can come and prototype, find funding, become a creator. There is the example of [NewCo].
They came to the fab lab with their idea, made their first prototype and then went and looked for
funding. They first came to the fab lab to find skills and then they came back to improve their
product with our machines and the community” [co-founder fab lab]

A second role of the fab lab is to break down the barriers between people, companies and
institutional structures such as laboratories and research centers.

“The fab lab’s vocation is to decompartmentalize. The people that are part of the fab lab are
important. At work you mainly work with people that are like you while at the fab lab you come
across people who are complementary, with other skills. The key question for us is how to
create more synergies, get more people to exchange with one another. The idea is that you come
here to find the skills and resources you need to create whether you are an artist or entrepreneur
or whatever. Our goal is to create an innovation ecosystem” [co-founder fab lab]

However, getting people to work together is difficult.

“We’ve got lots of people that come and look for some skills but we rarely have someone that
comes in with a project that everyone can work on. It’s mainly point-to-point where people
come for some specific help” [co-founder fab lab]

“There has to be a motor, such as a weekend where we invite people to come and work on a
project or when we prepare for a festival or a presentation. Otherwise people don’t collaborate
that much. They tend to work one-on-one” [co-founder fab lab]

The open, multidisciplinary, grass-roots nature of the fab lab has also attracted a number of
interested companies that have come to use the facilities for conferences or privatized events.
The fab lab’s physical environment and its “mission” to popularize digital manufacturing
technologies attract new members and a traffic of curious individuals, professionals and
companies.

“We’ve gone from 50 members to 500 in one year. It’s the fruit of five year’s work. The main
difference is that we have a fab lab manager and a pleasant site in the city center” [co-founder
fab lab]

“The fact that we have 500 members and that fifteen people are giving their time for the
[conference] is a sign of our success. If people didn’t believe in what we’re doing here then they
wouldn’t commit” [co-founder fab lab]

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The fab lab’s “theory of change” involves taking a federating role in a larger ecosystem that is
built around digital manufacturing technologies. Change can only come about if other actors
in the ecosystem change with it.

“It’s very hard to fight against something, but for an individual to undertake an action at his or
her level is already a start. We need to give the people the possibility to act locally” [co-founder
fab lab]

“We can change mentalities. You have to be in the ecosystem, multiply your contacts, show that
you too can contribute to innovation. The fab lab can help make a prototype, you know! And
you also have to remain loyal to your values” [co-founder fab lab]

The importance of the ecosystem for the fab lab can be seen from figure 1. The fab lab must
serve a large number of beneficiaries and satisfy numerous resource providers to continue
operating. The science for youth program and the local government expect the fab lab to play
a central role in a local innovation ecosystem but have only provided financing for the next
two years upon condition that the fab lab become self-financed beyond that time.

Environmental conditions
Politics and administrative structures : French Department for Industrial Renewal, FrenchTech policies
Economics and markets : FabLab movement, access to digital manufacturing technologies
Geography and infrastructure : Local high‐tech industry and research laboratories
Culture and social fabric : Large university and student population, industrial activities

Resource providers Competition Bystanders

Financial • Other associations (for • Professionals, companies and
• Membership dues resources) universities : « Should we start
• Paid machine time • Rapid prototypers and 3D print our own? »
• French government shops (for B2B clients) • Rapid prototypers and 3D
printer shops
Material and technological
• Municipality FabLab Beneficiaires and customers
« A place for multidisciplinary • Members
Human creation, the sharing and diffusion • Science for youth program
• Members’ knowledge of knowledge. Access to scientific • Start‐ups and incubators
• FabLab manager culture for everyone » • Students and schools
• Laboratoires/universitaires
Networking • Designers, architects, and
• FabLab network Complementary organizations companies
• Science for youth program and allies
• Municipality • Local industrial clusters and
professional associations Opponents and trouble makers
• 3D printer manufacturer Sceptical technicians in local
Technological
• Municipality adminsitrations
• Open source movement
• Incubators, schools

Impact
Popularize access to digital manufacturing technologies and knowledge.

Figure 1: The ecosystem of the fab lab

The fab lab sees itself as part of a network of local actors that make up an “innovation
ecosystem”. Informing and demonstrating that it is part of that ecosystem is one of the main
preoccupations of the fab lab management team.

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The fab lab is positioned between the political desire for a new collaborative way of working
and the economic and behavioral realities of existing ways of working. While environmental
conditions have favored the emergence of the fab lab, for it to make a lasting impact
according to Bloom and Dees (2008) it needs to introduce new practices and ways of working
to establish new behavior patterns.

One path for change is working through complementary organizations and allies to change the
practices of the beneficiaries that they are in contact with. For example, local industry clusters
can promote the fab lab to its members and incubators can encourage start-ups to use the fab
lab facilities and network for prototyping.

The fab lab’s response to attract professional users has been to segment its activity around
three identified user groups - the general public, companies and research bodies. It sees its
professional services activity as the main generator of revenues and also a catalyst to push for
lasting change.

By professionalizing part of its activities, the fab lab hopes to attract business from companies
for a number of services including

 paid access to high quality machine (ex. a 3D scanner and color and large milling
machine);
 complete prototyping services;
 training and workshops on digital manufacturing and rapid prototyping;
 co-working facilities and networking services within the “innovation ecosystem” for
start-ups;
 and the possibility to privatize machines and workspaces11

The fab lab intends to use the development of its professional services to reinforce its existing
activity.

“Of course one of the objectives of our project is to improve and reinforce the existing services
available to the general public (mixed events, access to professional machines at specific times,
increased workforce) […] Our underlying objective is to raise awareness of digital fabrication
amongst as many actors as possible; through our way of working, our events and training
sessions, we plan to reach 500 companies in the [greater region] and help them realize the
12
importance of digital manufacturing and its impact on their business models”

The development of professional activities should increase the opportunities for exchange.

There is a risk that privatizing part of the fab lab, akin to a privately run “techshop”, turns
“bystanders” such as 3D printing and prototyping service companies into opponents. It may
also modify the perception of the fab lab as an open, community-based place for creation.

11
Source: Internal document prepared to apply for state funding
12
Source: Internal document prepared to apply for state funding (p.5)

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Case 2 : The hackerspace

The hackerspace was founded in 2009 by a core group of ten enthusiasts. It was initially
housed by a collective of associations before moving into a set-out freight container amongst
a larger collective of artists. There are currently around 30 fee paying members.

The hackerspace doesn’t consider it has a mission or a role, but rather a vision that depends
on the projects of its different members13.

“I prefer the word vision. With a spirit of collaborating and sharing, transform objects from the
main function. Create new technological objects, more or less useful but that give us a super
buzz. Find complex solutions to non-existent problems. Make porn, because WE MAKE
PORN.” [member 1]

“The word ‘lab’ is part of our name, it’s a laboratory for experiments, whether they be technical
or artistic” [member 2]

“A hackerspace doesn’t have a common vision dictated by one person or a few. The members
define the [hackerspace] through their projects. If a member wants something he gets up and
does it without waiting for someone else to do it for him. Otherwise it doesn’t get done”
[member 3]

The hackerspace provides members with a favorable environment to develop their project.

“The structure itself doesn’t have a mission, but the people that are part of the hackerspace find
fertile ground that makes their project possible” [co-founder hackerspace]

In the same way that it doesn’t define precise objectives, the hackerspace rejects any idea of
measuring them. What remains important for the hackerspace is providing a place for
collaborating and working on “cool” projects.

“This is not the sort of vision we have. We are a space for exchange and collaboration. This
kind of quantification is no doubt important for people in a business school but it is totally
abstract for us” [member 1]

“We could be rich and famous but it’s not our goal” [member 3]

“We’ve got enough rules/objectives/charts/diagrams and statistics in our daily lives to not bring
them into our free time. Even if we sometimes give ourselves deadlines to present projects at
events ‘because it’d be really cool!’ sometimes we don’t meet them and it’s not the end of the
world … Generally (for me anyway) I’ve reached my objective when I get sick of a project and
I want to move onto something else” [member 4]

A “cool” project is often one that makes a political statement. One of the co-founders of the
hackerspace describes a project about Internet privacy that was put together to show visitors
at an exposition how their personal information is collected and abused.

“When we start a project it’s to alert people, and make tangible our feelings about things such as
the invasion of our personal space and of our private life. For example, at the [digital trends

13
The researcher’s understanding of the hackerspace’s ecosystem and functioning was constructed from online
sources, an interview and questions asked to members of the hackerspace through an online document. It is
important to note that opinions expressed by one particular member of the hackerspace do not necessarily
reflect those of the other members.

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conference] we invited visitors into a fun space where we collected lots of information about
them without them knowing, and then we went online onto Facebook and so on to collect some
more. We pieced together all the information we had and projected it up on a wall at the end of
their visit” [co-founder hackerspace]

Another project that shows the potically engaged nature of the hackerspace was launched in
2011 when the French government passed legislation on the monitoring of the Internet.

“In 2011 we created stickers with ‘We make porn’ when the Internet law was enacted. When
you monitor the Internet, you monitor everything and you should never accept that a
government monitors everything. So we used the key words ‘We make porn’ just to show how
stupid the law was” [co-founder hackerspace]

The “We make porn” project was thought up by one particular member, it was worked on by
other members of the hackerspace and was then taken up by other hackerspaces elsewhere.

“[Bill] made it because that’s the reason that he wanted to be part of the hackerspace to begin
with” [co-founder hackerspace]

While the hackerspace rejects any formal objectives or measurement of its outputs, it does
have established processes to ensure a “democratic” way of functioning. It applies the
principles of a “liquid democracy” 14.

“There is a lot of democracy in a hackerspace. Nobody is allowed to decide without having

consulted everyone first. Everyone is consulted, but they can delegate their response to another
member. It’s a liquid democracy. We use software to make it work” [co-founder hackerspace]

The hackerspace is financed by membership dues and by paid services it’s members
occasionally provide to public bodies for animations and conferences. Financial independence
is an important principle for the hackerspace and it refuses any funding from administrative
and corporate sources.

“Associations: yes, we have kinships, exchange of services and members between [the
hackerspace], [youth science and technology association], [not for profit ISP], [free software
user group], …

Administrations, Companies: No! Over my dead body!” [member 1]

It rejects the idea of being in competition for resources in its ecosystem with other actors,
such as other associations and doesn’t seek to have any particular influence on the local urban
area.

“Again I don’t think the word competition is part of our language” [member 1]

“We don’t care about the local urban area. We want to be international … Humility is one of
the principals of hackerspaces” [member 3]

14
A liquid democracy is “a democratic system in which most issues are decided (or strongly suggested to
representatives) by direct referendum. Considering nobody has enough time and knowledge for every issue,
votes can be delegated by topic. Furthermore delegations are transitive and can be revoked at any time. Liquid
Democracy is sometimes referred to as Delegated or Proxy Voting” (Source:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Liquid_Democracy)

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The main obstacle that prevents hackerspace members from attaining their objectives is time
and money.

“Time. Money. But above all time. There is always a cheaper solution. Time is not a simple
matter with our daily activities” [member 1]

One of the hackerspace’s main allies is an artistic collective that defines itself as “a place of
interaction at all levels of the artistic creation process from the bubbling and harvesting of
ideas and desires to the necessary spaces to produce a work”. A large number of the projects
showcased by the hackerspace have an artistic quality.

“In a lot of hackerspaces that I know, they are mixed spaces. There are people that know
nothing about technology but are curious. Some have a taste for technology while others are
more artistic in nature. The uses that are made of objects, the things that are done to them, the
animations may all be artistic in some way. When you go to a festival at a hackerspace, they are
places where you feel good. Its ‘trans genre’. There is more than technology. A hackerspace is
really about curiosity. And if it emerges it’s because these different people meet up” [co-
founder hackerspace].

Apart from the hackerspace’s members and like-minded partner associations, others may also
benefit from its activities. One example given was of a large local manufacturing company
that presented a new service based on a hack of the Microsoft Kinect. The functioning of the
product and the hack used was similar to a hackerspace production some two years earlier.

Our understanding of the hackerspace ecosystem is presented in figure 2 below.

The fab lab and the hackerspace mutually respect one another, all the while recognizing their
key differences. According to one of the fab lab’s co-founders, the hackerspace is above all
political:

“The hackerspace is much more poltical than the fab lab. They are financial independent. Its
more miltant. You appropriate a technology and owe nothing to anybody. There’s a culture:
you’re a hancker or a maker. Everyone can go but not everyone will stay. There is a mutual
respect but we don’t work together” [co-founder fab lab]

One of the co-founders of the hackerspace concurs with this view. If there is no political
message or agenda, then it’s not a hackerspace.

“There is a risk that the hackerspace is not political enough. You know, ‘I use technology and
that’s cool’. But if there aren’t any ideas or engagement for a cause then it becomes a fab lab.
You can’t talk politics in a fab lab” [co-founder hackerspace]

The hackerspace considers the fab lab to be “organized, formal, procedural” while the
hackerspace is “underground, cyberpunk, hip, off-beat, crazy” [member 1]. The contributor
insisted that the adjectives used to describe the fab lab should be seen as qualities “out of the
greatest respect for [the fab lab] and its members”.

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Environmental conditions
Politics and administrative structures : Invasive government actions and laws
Economics and markets : Consumerist society, big data collection
Culture and social fabric : Local like‐minded associations

Resource providers Competition Bystanders

Financial • « The word competition is not • R&D departments of
• Membership dues really part of our language » manufacturing companies
• Open days • « If someone does the same thing, • Wary manufacturers
• Occassional paid services they will be encouraged to do it
with us »
Material and human
• Members’ knowledge Beneficiaires and customers
Tetalab • Members
• Like minded associations
A hackerspace the respects the ideals • Allies
• Salvaged equipment
of the hacker movement. • Innovation arms of
Networking manufacturing companies
• Hackerspace network
• Like minded associations
Complementary organizations and Opponents and trouble
Technological allies makers
• Members • Local artists collective Manufacturers that don’t
• Open source movement • Local not for profit ISP want their products hacked
• Local free software user group
• Not for profit youth science and
technology association

Impact
« This is not the sort of vision we have. We are a space for exchange and collaboration »
« I reach my objective when I get sick of a project and move onto something else »

Figure 2: The ecosystem of the hackerspace

According to one of the co-founders of the hackerspace, fab labs have emerged from the
hackerspace movement.

“Fab labs are a remainder or a by-product of hackerspaces that have been structured by
academics. Fab labs have been created thanks to a charter written by Neil Gershenfeld and his
academic thinking and formalism. He offered a model that a great number of people were able
to quickly adopt” [co-founder hackerspace]

The main differences between the two spaces are the projects and objectives of the people that
use them.

“Hackers say ‘how do I do something that’s not in the manual?’ Those in the fab lab say ‘there
are machines available, what can I do with them? I’ll do something in the manual and then I’ll
think about doing something else afterwards’ ” [co-founder hackerspace]

“That’s the hacker culture. He does his thing and he gives it to others. There are no guidelines
except one: do things as standard as possible because it’s the most universal. That way anyone
can build on them. That’s it. Enlarge the realm of what’s possible” [co-founder hackerspace]

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The hackerspace ensures that projects and new members adhere to its ideals and ethic.

“In a hackerspace it’s really rare for there to be a project leader. In the fab lab there always is
one. People are judged by whether they want to do something together or for themselves. If they
fall into the second category then we say: ‘Have you heard of the fab lab’?” [co-founder
hackerspace]

For the hackerspace, fab labs can play a role of initiating people that aren’t confident in their
technical abilities.

“The fab lab will be a trigger, a leg up for people that say ‘I haven’t been to engineering school,
I don’t know Linux’” [co-founder hackerspace]

Interestingly, neither the fab lab nor the hackerspace identified one another as being a part of
their ecosystem.

We will now compare the two spaces and discuss the differences in light of previous research.

Discussion
While the hackerspace and the fab lab are similar in a number of respects, the ways they view
their impact and manage their ecosystem differ markedly. The main differences are
summarized in table 1 below.

Ecosystem element Fab lab Hackerspace

Impact Increase access to digital No intended impact
manufacturing technologies and The vision of the hackerspace depends
knowledge on the projects of its members
Create a space for multidisciplinary Provide a community-operated physical
exchange and sharing place where people can meet and work
on their projects
Theory for change Be an important part of the No theory for change
innovation ecosystem, convincing Encourage projects and ways of
different actors to use the digital collaborating that respect the hacker
manufacturing services and ethic
community knowledge
Enlarge the community and the
scope of exchange to laboratories
and established companies

Table 1: Comparison of fab lab and hackerspace impacts and theories of change

The hackerspace members collectively animate its ecosystem and work on projects and
activities that remain loyal to the hacker ethic. The hacker culture is what bonds members
together and brings the technology and artistic cultures together by valuing and encouraging
discovery and new forms of expression. The hackerspace has no explicit mission apart from
providing a fertile environment for members to work on projects.

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The challenge the hackerspace faces is in resisting the tendency to become mainstream. Over
the past decade there has “hacking practices consisting in the modification and subversion of
digital devices” have become popularized (Magaudda, 2012) and a number of hackerspaces
have tended to move away from political agendas (Grenzfurthner & Schneider, 2009).

The fab lab is more proactive in the development of its ecosystem. Buoyed by favorable
environmental conditions it is trying to change practices and behaviors and in so doing
become a relevant part of a new “innovation ecosystem” around digital manufacturing
technologies. The challenge for the fab lab is to move beyond the “early adopters” (Rogers,
1962) of low-cost digital manufacturing services that are schools and start-ups and convince
professionals and businesses to work differently with new digital technologies.

From the point of view of the urban area, the fab lab and the hackerspace are complementary.
Both the fab lab and the hackerspace empower creation by providing common, community
organized places for people to work on their projects but each provides a different “climate”
(Ashforth, 1985) for project work and exchange. Ashforth defines “climate” in organizations
as “a shared and enduring molar perception of the psychologically important aspects of the
work environment” (p.837). The climate perceived by an individual reflects what is
psychologically meaningful to them. These perceptions tend to be both shared and resistant to
change. Individuals will no doubt choose the space that offers a climate that best favors work
on their project.

Both spaces allow for “creative chances” (Snow, 1959) that emerge when different cultures
are brought together. The hacker culture that underlies the hackerspace and encourages
discovery and alternative forms of expression has allowed it to naturally nurture exchanges
between technologists and artists. The hackerspace has produced a large number of works that
show that it can allow such creativity. The hackerspace doesn’t need to change any practices
to make an impact as they already empower and provide a space for an existing community of
interest. People are more readily engaged if they perceive creative activities as personally
meaningful (Fischer, 2002).

The fab lab on the other hand has to work to change the way different cultures interact. While
digital manufacturing acts as a convergence tool that brings different communities of practice
to use the same digital technologies at a point in time, making these communities interact,
share and create together will require changes to working practices and habits. Research in the
design literature has highlighted the difficulties in getting individuals from different
communities of practice, each with their own “object world”15 to work together. Where a
hackerspace brings technical and artistic cultures together through a common sub-culture, fab
labs needs to change working behaviors and practices to federate multiple cultures around the
same project.

15
Bucciarelli (2002) explains that “different participants, with different competencies, skills, responsibilities
and interests, inhabit different worlds. As such, while admittedly working on the same object of design, they
see the object differently” (p.220) and speak a different language.

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Conclusion
Hackerspaces and fab labs offer environments that favor “playing” with new technologies and
ideas (Bergen, 2009). They bring out the ‘maker in us’. No matter how we live our lives or
what our goals might be, we are all makers : “as cooks preparing food for our families, as
gardeners, as knitters […] While people today may not treasure this ability out of the same
sense of necessity as they once did, they are finding their lives enriched by creating something
new and learning new skills” (Dougherty, 2012, p. 11)

The coexistence of both of these spaces makes it possible for individuals to play with new
technologies for commercial gain, artistic expression, personal satisfaction or to make a
political statement. The existence of both spaces in the same urban space means that it is
possible for use to find one or more communities to play with, in a climate we find
comfortable and bring out the hacker within.

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Appendix 1: The ecosystem framework adapted from Bloom and Dees (2008)

Environmental conditions
Politics and administrative structures : rules and regulations, processes and procedures
Economics and markets : the overall economic health of the regions in which social entrepreneurs operate and seek resources as well as
the region’s distribution of wealth and income, economic prospects, levels of entrepreneurial activity, and relevant markets.
Geography and infrastructure : the physical terrain and location, but also the infrastructure that social entrepreneurs count on for
transportation, communication, and other operating needs.
Culture and social fabric : the norms and values, important subgroups, social networks, and demographic trends of the people living in the
area.

Resource providers Competitors Bystanders

These players include providers This category includes both Players who have no direct impact now, but who
of financial, human, knowledge, organizations that compete with the are affected by their efforts or who could
networking, and technological social entrepreneur’s organization influence their success including organizations
resources, and any brokers or for resources and those that that could be harmed and may become
intermediaries that channel compete to serve the same opponents, organizations that incidentally
these resources to those who beneficiaries. benefit from their success and turn them into
want them. Inadequacies and allies or resource providers and parties
inefficiencies in this category who are currently neutral but could influence
can seriously constrain social The social entrepreneur change
entrepreneurs’ ability to achieve
impact, just as a plant will Beneficiaires and customers
struggle if it is cut off from Complementary organizations
These players include clients, patients,
adequate sunlight, water, or and allies customers, and others who benefit from social
other nutrients. These players are organizations or entrepreneurs’ activities. Sometimes, the
individuals that facilitate a social ultimate beneficiaries may not interact with the
entrepreneur’s ability to create organization at all.
impact. This includes partners who
perform critical steps in the social
Social entrepreneurs’ entrepreneur’s theory of change, Opponents and trouble makers
ecosystem maps should reflect individuals and organizations These players contribute to the problems social
the dynamic nature of their supporting the same cause, and entrepreneurs are addressing, undermine the
ecosystems, noting trends and people providing important ability of the organizations to achieve and sustain
anticipating potential changes. complementary services. their intended impact, or oppose their efforts
politically

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