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Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#11

Post by trotsky »

shaunxcode wrote: post #2

wouldn't a hacker hippie commune be more about building a robotic plow and spending your, now spare, time OCRing and analyzing old farmers almanacs to determine the optimal time to plant/rotate/water crops?

In today's culture, it might be dreamed up on facebook, funded on kickstarter, promoted on twitter, picked up by 10,000 blogs that all poach from each other and then abandoned by the next semester because the earth-water-sun interface is ancient and suffers from significant design issues whose tickets never get responded to by the upstream provider.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#12

Post by sliverstorm »

citizenkeys wrote: post #3
shaunxcode wrote: post #2

wouldn't a hacker hippie commune be more about building a robotic plow and spending your, now spare, time OCRing and analyzing old farmers almanacs to determine the optimal time to plant/rotate/water crops?

many years ago, i've lived on non-hacker hippie communes. there's actually several outside of austin in texas. it makes sense given all the cheap ranch land in rural texas. ideally, you have a "main house" with the kitchen and where everybody meets up. then you have little cottages all over the ranch with bunk beds where everybody sleeps and works. when people need to buy stuff, they drive into town. for hackers that…

Most hackers want internet. Otherwise they wouldn't be reading Hacker News.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#14

Post by citizenkeys »

philfreo wrote: post #10

SuperHappyDevHouse or Hacker Dojo? http://superhappydevhouse.org/ http://wiki.hackerdojo.com/ Also... List of Hacker Spaces - http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

These places look cool. I'm gonna check out that Hacker Dojo place.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#15

Post by pessimizer »

I've been thinking about it for years. The only problem is that most programmers seem to be status quo capitalists bordering on libertarian. It might be easier to teach hippies to program than programmers not to be aspirational yuppie SWPLs.

A couple of cults have gotten by on programming and/or web design, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate come to mind.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#16

Post by citizenkeys »

Some clarification:

Commune does not mean being without internet, nor does it necessarily imply growing food.

Think about it: if we had bunk beds, we could stack hackers on top of each other to save space. Compress at least twice as many in the same space. And if we bought food in bulk, we could eat better on the same amount we ordinarily need to live on ramen budgets.

All this being said, I am broke, broke, broke! I burned through all my school financial aid until next semester starts in January. My email is citizenkeys@gmail.com . If anybody's got an extra bedroom for a month...

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#17

Post by citizenkeys »

pessimizer wrote: post #15

I've been thinking about it for years. The only problem is that most programmers seem to be status quo capitalists bordering on libertarian. It might be easier to teach hippies to program than programmers not to be aspirational yuppie SWPLs. A couple of cults have gotten by on programming and/or web design, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate come to mind.

yeah... I looked up heaven's gate earlier.

I'm talking about a "do your own thing" place to eat, sleep, and code. not any sort of weird cult.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#19

Post by danteembermage »

I just watched The Secret of Kells on Netflix and was wondering the same thing. The protagonist has a complete devotion to the creation of illuminated texts which seemed like a perfect stand in for [insert open source project that would illuminate the world here]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Kells

Re: Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers?

#20

Post by citizenkeys »

Seriously... I'm going to register a domain and try and set this up on kickstarter. If anyone wants to help out with design or whatever, send me an email to citizenkeys@gmail.com .

In theory, if we just had a big rental place with couches, bunkbeds, a kitchen, and a place to shower. That'd be enough to start.

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