NYC Resistor: DIY Hackers Doing Awesome Things

HansonMB writes "Founded by a handful of friends who wanted a place to tinker with electronics and meet like-minded hackers for good, NYC Resistor has blossomed into one of the country's most influential hackerspaces. On any given Thursday night, their cozy, cluttered loft workshop is crawling with a diverse crowd of hardcore tinkerers and curious newcomers. Throwing some caution and many user warranties to the wind, they're there to build, refine, break and share everything from toy robots to intricate paper sculpture to open source musical instruments."

Comments

Re:Labels and Pop Culture

[cbiltcliffe]

I don't know why being creative in the "industrial arts" has gained hipster status...

It's either hip, or terrifying, depending on who you talk to.
That being said, the reason is simple:
The vast majority of people nowadays have no idea what goes on outside their own job, and a lot of them don't even know what goes on _in_ their own job.

The days of most people being able to take things apart and fix them themselves are long behind us. What caused this downfall of knowledge, I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with Fox, American Idle, partisan politics, NIMBY, and excessive litigation.

Basically, society has been moving in a direction that discourages - or downright criminalizes - tinkering. Most people support this, because it means they don't have to know how things work, and the mental stimulation and exercise that might be required is easier to waste on Fox and American Idle.

The fact that you can get sued for changing a chip out in your own hardware is simply an extra reason to avoid even finding out how to do it. If you're a clueless idiot with technology, you can't be accused of modifying that technology.