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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?

#81

Post by neilk »

citizenkeys wrote: post #68

sitting at noisebridge right now: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge this is almost what i had in mind, only my version has bedrooms, showers, and allows pets. noisebridge kicks ass. it's a giant hacker studio. i've never been here before. if you're a hacker and live in san francisco, you owe it to yourself to just show up here at least once. i will be here for awhile tonight if anybody wants to chill out.

Noisebridge has had some issues (actually ongoing issues) with people that treat it as a living space, or just "forget to take the last BART" with suspicious regularity. Maybe your idea would solve that problem. Or maybe it would exacerbate it, not sure.

Unrelated: there's also another movement called "cohousing" which tries to strike a middle ground between the post-WWII standard of one-family-per-house, and communes that tend to have a complete lack of privacy.

http://www.cohousing.org/

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

#82

Post by danohuiginn »

JesseAldridge wrote: post #40
citizenkeys wrote: post #16

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…

Let me know if you figure something out. I've got $4000 in the bank. Rent is by far my largest expense. Solve that problem and your runway length approaches infinity.

but tightly-packed communal living is a solution to high rent. Share a bedroom between 8 people. Add office space, kitchen, bathroom, and you've got your entire startup packed into one 2-room apartment.

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

#83

Post by gonzo »

I made my own just outside of Austin, TX once.

Bought a 10 AC farm just outside Blanco. Was already certified for growing organic "elephant" garlic.

Had a little cottage, a well, with rainwater collection (I flushed the toilets with this, it was nearly trivial to change-over the plumbing.)

Dropped Cable into it (for IP).

Added 2KW of solar panels, and a 250 gallon propane tank.

Was into it for maybe $130K, fully paid-off.

Grew my own food, hacked some.

Got tired of living without other technology folk around, sold it.

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

#84

Post by derefr »

danenania wrote: post #75
burgerbrain wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, I googled it after being dumbfounded by the seemingly random specificness of the post (does anybody say "I had a few beers while I watched my Panasonic"? No, everyone just calls TVs "TVs"), and discovered that the poster was just making an attempt at being smug.

The guy writes an interesting and informative post, and the part you latch onto is how he refers to his freakin' notebook?

I take issue with your taking issue with his taking issue with the post :)

Specifically, this is a threaded comment system. We can have as many discussions about something (post or other comment) as we want: go off on wild tangents, point out the spelling, have a pun thread, mention patterns of blogging/commenting the parent fits into, reply to the author on a separate subject, share anecdotes related to the subject of the post, and actually talk about the content of a post or comment, all at the same time, without breaking anything. That's what's so neat about threaded discussion: it doesn't require the "comparative notability" that a linear conversation needs in order to function.

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

#85

Post by _delirium »

olefoo wrote: post #35
trotsky wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm tempted to start blogging up the project proposal for a hippie arcology to be built on a south facing slope in southern Oregon with geothermal backup heat and a fiber optic connection to the internet for the remote workers whose economic contributions exempt them from the maintenance duties that the less skilled have to do (hey, someone needs to turn the compost heaps and feed the tilapia you know). The basic des…

> I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full circle.

Sort of a tangent, but the Whole Earth Catalog scene and the tech scene were surprisingly inter-related in the 60s-80s, which is something I didn't know until recently. Ted Nelson, who had coined the word "hypertext" about three years before the first WEC was published, was greatly influenced by it for his 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines, and Steve Jobs was an avid reader as well. There was even briefly a software version in the 80s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_an...

I think I was surprised to find a connection mainly because in 2010 I associate the Whole Earth Catalog more with anti-technology primitivists, which doesn't seem to have originally been the case--- seems plenty of technologists were also interested in it, since DIY doesn't have to mean primitivism.

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

#87

Post by c3o »

citizenkeys wrote: post #29

Okay, I got the concept down: What I'm imagining is a drop-in center / hostel for hackers. The wikipedia article on hostels kinda sums up what i have in mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel The pictures do a good job of showing what I had in mind.

Yes! I'm involved with a hacker space in Vienna, Austria (we're proud that Noisebridge cites us as inspiration) and I've long believed that on the floor above every hackerspace there should be a hostel. A "hackers in residence" program, if you will – complete with international exchanges and a "worldwide pass" subscription. I haven't figured out how to cover the starting costs, but using Kickstarter is a really good idea. You should start a mailing list/Facebook group/wiki.

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

#88

Post by akho »

danilocampos wrote: post #79
burgerbrain wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, I googled it after being dumbfounded by the seemingly random specificness of the post (does anybody say "I had a few beers while I watched my Panasonic"? No, everyone just calls TVs "TVs"), and discovered that the poster was just making an attempt at being smug.

TV's are commodities. There's no important difference from one brand to another. Moleskines, by merit of their unique design and brand identity, are in a different boat.

No. There is a gajillion brands of hardly distinguishable black notebooks. Differences in quality are far less than those between TV manufacturers.

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

#89

Post by Inviz »

I share a large close to luxury house with atleast three hackers located in Bali, Indonesia. Recently we finished the transfer by getting a good internet connection (not that easy in mountains, but totally worth it). My advice - move to the friendly environment that lets you live off really small money (100$ is a good salary for locals here) and then things are easy and pleasing.

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

#90

Post by Tyrant505 »

citizenkeys wrote: post #17
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.

The work must be shared by all.
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