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Mitch Altman Parts Ways With Maker Fair Over DARPA Grant
SWroclawski writes "Well known hacker and hackerspace advocate Mitch Altman has decided to temporarily part ways with Maker Faire over their involvement with DARPA (as reported on Twitter and Facebook). This public parting of ways raises the question of what role government, especially the military, should play in working alongside hackers and educators."
That's the problem with most activists. They're all for freedom, just as long as people only use that freedom to agree with them. He wants Maker Faire to accept sponsors, of course, but only those that fit into *his* ideals.
And I bet this guy would go ballistic if someone dared try to tell him what he can and can't build or invent. But now that he's confronted with the possibility of people using *their* freedom to build stuff that *he* doesn't like (for a sponsor that doesn't fit in with *his* vision), suddenly he wants to take his ball and go home.
Also, last time I checked, Maker Faire wasn't forcing anyone to build anything. If you don't want to build stuff with military applications, then you know what--JUST DON'T!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The internet was originally called ARPANET! Arpa was the precursor to Darpa. With out government backing the internet would not exist as we know it!
Move on Nothing to see here!
They should take their self righteous ass off of the the Internet too. Darpa has funded many, many things that have gone on to serve the public good.
"This public parting of ways raises the question of what role government, especially the military, should play in working alongside hackers and educators"
Not a particularly good question, however. The government should play whatever role it can, so long as it's not a hindrance. After all, without DARPA where would we be today?
Or to put it another way, instead of being self-righteous about DARPA, maybe he should be glad they're joining up with hackers instead of finding new ways to kill impoverished people in 3rd world nations?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What do you think DARPA is interested in all this stuff for? Shits and giggles?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You say that like it is mutually exclusive.
Lots of military circle jerking in these comments, I can already tell.
Fact: The military's job is to support the interests of the rulers of the country.
Fact: The rulers of our country give zero fucks about you and your well-being. They care only for their own benefit.
Masturbate all you want to fantasies of a noble DARPA where the clever scientists use their smarts to beat the Bad Guys. But the bottom line is that DARPA is controlled by the very same people who would prefer you and your family are wage slaves for your entire lives and will annihilate local populations for their pursuit of natural resources.
Since the Hackers (or Hacktivists) and Makers are the only serious threat, with the tools and means to challenge established order in case of mass uprising against our society surrendering everything to the Banker-Kings, it is only natural for the military to take "interest" in these communities...
I can imagine there might be good and bad reasons to part ways, and I'm wondering if he's explained himself somewhere.
If the DARPA involvement is just to encourage cleverness and the sciences, I don't think he has a leg to stand on (or his principles are WAY different than mine), but if DARPA is having the kids build specific technologies being used for military applications, it might be worth parting ways over it.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
So one guy doesn't show up. That's fine. DARPA will get his ideas anyways if they go global.
Meanwhile, by funding science, unlike the rest of the government (hi Congress), DARPA might make technology more accessible for kids that might otherwise not see it.
One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; DARPA will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new military overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted geek, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their hackerspaces.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
And in a move of supreme irony, he is glady leaving to support Chinese Hackerspaces:
Here's a clue, kiddo - try to find anything of significance in China that doesnt have involvement from the People's Liberation Army. But you got no problem supporting that?
Please by all means boycott all civilian technology every developed out of the military such as THE INTERNET.
Seriously, if anything they should have been more cooperative and helpful. DARPA has all the cool toys. Not to mention they can help you do cool things you cant do otherwise. Rockets, lasers, etc.
And if it doesn't work out, hey, you're in. You now are in a position to affect change and make it run your way, or do max damage (if you so choose).
All these peeps hating on the military need to go get themselves about a dozen fucking clues.
Because it was developed by Darpa.
Government Bad... Private Enterprise Good....
Its maybe time to put the failed beliefs aside. Private Enterprise has dug us all into a very neat hole, and separating it from Government is probably one of the few answers that holds any hope of saving this smoking hole that is the remains of our economy. On the other hand DARPA is one of the few things our government has gotten right. The list of truly cool things that DARPA has invested in is nothing less than impressive. We all enjoy the benefits of those things brought into existence as a function of DARPA investments.
Let's say DARPA invests in perfecting the Hammer, because a hammer can bang your enemy up real good. By the way those hammers are great at building houses, mining mineral, shaping metal and forgings, wood working, and sculpting artwork. So that one investment has huge social implications and tremendous collateral value. I worked with a company in 1997, that was lead by a small team of engineers fresh out of MIT. They had developed a processor with a hundred processing units on a three level network, which could be reconfigured to perform a vast variety of task (our use at the time however was signal processing, many simultaneous signal processors and CPUs existing in software operating on a single chip.) DARPA invested several million to help get the technology off the ground, and ultimately Broadcom bought the technology (Cisco had their fingers in it too.) Today's VOIP takeover is the result of that technology, and it would never have happened without DARPA seeing that this made many new interesting things possible (including a single chip synthetic aperture processor for high resolution imaging from directed radar emissions.)
I don't know if there is a Karmic debt for taking money from warriors. I'd prefer to look at the fruit the tree bears and judge it from what it contributes. In this case, DARPA has served us well, and is one of the few government organizations that I would welcome to any group of creators and inventors. This is a fine use of our tax dollars and is one area where government serves us well.
It's DARPA, quite probably the one sub-branch of the US military which has actually improved the human condition. I could list all the research that DARPA has supported over the years, but I suspect I'd be wasting my breath (or fingers as the case may be).
The military's job is to uphold and defend the constitution from threats foreign and domestic. I highlight that part, because yes, it's kind of forgotten by the military lately.
Your second fact, I have no issues with. Carry on, AC. Carry on.
And ... unless you can find some projects that DARPA invested resources in even with the explicit understanding that there weren't any military applications, you won't have anything to disprove the GP's point. DARPA looks for improved military tech. The fact that a lot of military tech has peaceful applications as well doesn't mean that DARPA's projects are benign.
Yeah. The internet has done a lot for peaceful communication. But it also carried useful lessons in how to keep military information flowing even when parts of the military network were being actively disrupted by enemy action. And yeah, GPS has done a lot for civilian navigation. It also did a lot for military tracking and ordnance delivery.
It seems Mitch Altman's decision to part ways seems to have really touched a nerve here at Slashdot. I wonder why?!!
Many people here give example of the Internet and GPS to justify DARPA. Below is a comment by Jeff Putney on Mitch Altman's Facebook page with which I tend to agree.
In the spirit suggested of talking about this. I don't think it's about not accepting DARPA work, lets be clear, the internet would have, in another form, existed without DARPA. To say otherwise would be like arguing physics wouldn't exist without a bunch of old overprivileged white guys.
We also have no idea what technology we have missed out on by pouring billions into things we simply blow up or use to kill people instead of focusing that work somewhere else(space exploration lets say).
For me I think it is also about not teaching kids that I am ok with participating in a system of power that can outwardly reflect values gravely different my own just because there are sufficient layers of encapsulation to make it possible for me to rationalize my participation.
I do think in one way or another we all participate in the military industrial complex in ways that are unavoidable(taxes) or in ways that are almost impossible to notice, but when there are things I can notice and change, I want to, and I want to make some noise about. So thank you Mitch for being awesome about this.
--You can't be neutral on a moving train--
Just because something happened does not mean that was the only probable outcome. Lets keep our minds open to every possible course of action the past could have taken and the present can take.
The general gist of most of the comments that are modded up seem to be denouncing this guy. Maybe it's just that the pro military darpa types are more organized. Ok, the internet came out of DARPA. This guy doesn't want to work with DARPA, and that's his choice. Pro-military slashdot nerds aren't real slashdotters, or nerds. They gather at FPS contests to gleefully pretend to shoot things.
Everything has military applications.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
queen.
The point is he is not shunning those things. Just this one. It is hypocritical.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Mitch I'm sure realizes the greatest feat man has accomplished--sending men to the moon--was a military exercise, right? We sent a clear message to the USSR--if we can land men on the moon, we can certainly drop a nuke in the middle of Red Square. And there are all the other major breakthroughs: The Manhattan Project may have been evil--but from that research we have a cleaner source of energy and lots of medical breakthroughs.
But Mitch doesn't want to work with Darpa? Forget that without the internet and VOIP, Mitch wouldn't even have a company. The push now is in robotics and who in this country is doing more than any other organization to inspire our youth than Darpa? Now he tweets that he is heading to China to organize a hacker space? So instead of working with the youths of this country to educate and stimulate, Mitch would rather take his talents to China?
How can I guy that is as smart as he is not see the big picture. Rather than help his country succeed, he would rather give comfort and aid to Communist China? There has got to be something at play that folks aren't seeing--typically that would be money. Something tells me Darpa was willing to sponsor the event, but not pad Mitch's pockets. China on the other is more than happy to pay Mitch what ever he wants to help the Chinese military/industrial complex. Makes much more sense.
Say it ain't so, but there has to be some cash driving Mitch's decision.
I had an exhibit at Maker Faire once. I realized I was being used as free entertainment for a flea market. Haven't been there since. Maker Faire is a for-profit operation run by O'Reilly Media, whose main business is running overpriced conferences.
Well then why doesn't DARPA sponsor chilli cook-offs or drag racing? Seems to be mostly this hacking stuff with a big emphasis on object recognition and autonomous/unmanned vehicles...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But what about supporting the "Maker Festival" in China? That's OK? Really Mitch? Try using your TV-B-Gone while you vist, and you may not come back.
Actually the military probably remember that domestic part better than anyone else who swears that same or similar oaths. Since we are prohibited by law from doing anything domestically (Posse Comitatus anyone). Sure there were flagarant abuses in the past and will be abuses in the future, but the military are very aware of our oaths and for the most part want to honor the oath.
Most soldiers I know can quite that refrain from memory, even though we are prohibited from doing anything about it. Even the National Guard, which belonging to their respective states are normally exempt from Posse Comitatus, are usually heavily restricted from any involvement in police operations.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
DARPA was founded after Sputnik. Their mission is 'creating and preventing strategic surprise'.
Something Sputnik certainly provided.
This particular grant funds makerspaces in high schools. Obviously this is something with broad benefits if you think technology is overall a good thing.
Oh....wait...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The current DARPA leadership (and to a significant extent, the rest of DoD) is strongly supporting an open source world. This stuff they're doing with Advanced Vehicle Make, it's open. It's being made available for free. To everyone. And in particular to a whole generation of public school students. It's not going to end up as an expensive product that no one uses, or buried forever somewhere inside Lockheed-Martin. The fact that it's notionally about being a better way to build tanks is an excuse, not a motivation, for the people working on it. And this spirit--like that which built the original ARPAnet--is being pushed throughout the organization.
Yes, it's funded by the military. And yes, I'm sure that an omniscient five-year planner like AC could figure out a more optimal way to improve humanity by reallocating a lot of those research dollars to happier pursuits. But it's not like taking away those dollars would automatically put them somewhere more "worthy". And until AC is in charge, well, DARPA is a place where I'm really proud to see my taxpayer dollars going.
I'm sad that Mitch doesn't want to be associated with this effort, but from where I sit, it's doing a lot more good than harm. As opposed, say, to the Chinese Communist Party.
The fact that a lot of military tech has peaceful applications as well doesn't mean that DARPA's projects are benign.
That fact that DARPA projects have military applications doesn't make them evil.
We should stick with encouraging teens and twenties from lower income families to do this kind of work by hand.
Is Mitch Altman just another bourgeoisie with a pseudo-liberal agenda?
etc. and if you dont know who those guys are, and havent read their writing, then maybe you shouldnt be calling other people 'dumb'.
1. electricity becomes widespread, generators invented, hydropower, lights, medical devices, car batteries, etc.
1.a. governments immediately use electricity to torture and execute prisoners, employ it in the holocaust, etc.
2. nuclear physics pushes back our understanding of reality, and discovering that E=>mc*c
2.a. governments immediately use nuclear weapons to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians, cause countless cases of cancer, and start an arms race that , on several occasions, comes within a few hours of having a mass casualty nuclear war that would have been worse than the black plague, aids, the holocaust, the holodomor, and the gulags all combined together.
3. rocketry is invented, promising mankind freedom from the bounds of land or sea travel
3.a. governments immediately use it to murder civilians
4. biomedical knowledge grows by leaps and bounds, with the discovery of ways to detect and manipulate viruses, microbes, etc
4.a. governments immediately use this to set up things like Sigmund Rascher's research lab in Dachau, or Unit 731 in Japan.
5. Scientists like Einstein, Sakharov, and Sagan push for human rights work and plea that the world not blow itself up.
5.a. they are almost completely ignored and called 'fantasticals' for daring to oppose violence and militarism.
---
6. someone has the audacity to propose that maybe the hacker community should avoid military funding
6.a. somebody on slashdot calls this person 'anti freedom'.
>That is not, and has never been, even a *primary* purpose of DARPA, much less its sole purpose.
>That is not, and has never been, even a *primary* purpose of DARPA, much less its sole purpose.
I'm amusing it's not a silent 'D' or a stealth 'D' and guessing D does not stand for Development.
possibly de-Nile
Still they fund Cool Humming brids
DARPA funded the initial network that evolved in to the present-day Internet, but that was just an accident of history. Had that funding not occurred, we'd still have an Internet of the same epic scale today! So, arguing that Mitch was a hypocrite for using the Internet is really stupid or disingenuous!
At the time of the DARPA network project, telephones were already covering the world, and undoubtedly some computers were linked using telephone connections. And while the Internet slowly expanded beyond a few universities, telephone-based BBS networks, operated by ordinary citizens, already provided many information sharing mechanisms.
To credit DARPA with the invention of the Internet is like crediting Amazon.com with one-click checkout! Sure, a well-funded effort is going to go a little bit faster than unfunded efforts -- just as Microsoft can sometimes greatly outpace the efforts of open-source projects, if it is one of their priorities.
Some comments here even credit other inventions to DARPA efforts. Again, really stupid reasoning, because we would have all those things today, with or without DARPA funding. We live in a big world, with lots of individuals (and private organizations of people, like corporations) with their own genius and financial resources. LOL...Someone credited DARPA with the microchip! Gee whiz!
Einstein might have been the first to put the pieces of Relativity together, but given the mounting experimental evidence for various relativistic effects in the early 1900s, the idea of relativity was inevitable. Likewise, any invention credited to DARPA-funded projects were merely discovered or implemented somewhat earlier than they might otherwise have been -- probably by less than 5 years.
As for the other stupid comments framing Mitch's action as "a public hissy fit and taking his ball home", a temporary and publicized departure from Maker Fair is intended to be a message! It's a statement! That's the whole point. Make people actually THINK about DARPA's agenda, and whether or not that agenda is consistent with the spirit of Maker Fair. Other members of Maker Fair might be provoked to start thinking about this subject, and individually decide whether or not they are willing to participate in Maker Fair project sponsored in part by DARPA grants.
It is common for people -- particularly people already directly or indirectly involved in DoD / DARPA projects, as I'm sure many of the people making comments here are -- to regard such projects as benign. Also, tech people can have rather narrow view, where anything tech is good (like mechanized infantry, drones with missiles, domestic surveillance, etc). There are many rationalizations and blind-spots that make it easy to support such projects, and ridicule those who don't support such work. The solution is to objectively examine the opposite perspective, and discover how much of one's original view can be sustained.
I am a scientist. I have a choice. When a government organization I don't like comes to me for help I can either
ensure that organization gets good advice or I can refuse to help and risk that they're going to get bad advice. If no one "good" agrees to help, we're collectively ensuring they get bad advice. This is OUR government, why would we want that?
For a moral scientist or engineer, the clear correct choice is to help the government make good decisions. "Help" may mean convincing the government NOT to go down some technological path. He's giving up a chance to help direct DoD efforts in this area toward, for example, disaster relief.
"Helping the government" in some rare cases may mean exposing abuse or corruption, it's not always warm and fuzzy. That's not the case here. He's just abdicating responsibility for his work.
True, but I can still hate the fact that the largest economy in the world will not simply invest in bettering the human condition if it can not be done alongside improving it's ability to kill people.
It IS a lamentable state of affairs, and drawing attention to this, and staying out of research that is military funded is a principled stance, even if you use the previous civil accomplishments of military research (as we all do anyways).
"Well then why doesn't DARPA sponsor chilli cook-offs or drag racing?"
They do sponsor Chilli cook-offs, how do you think we got pepper spray?!
but a Mitch ain't one
>It's DARPA, quite probably the one sub-branch of the US military which has actually improved the human condition.
To judge that, wouldn't one have to have a complete picture of the things DARPA has done? Do you think you have that picture?