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."

Comments

People should be free, but only on your terms?

[crazyjj]

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!

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[Beelzebud]

Stupid activists. It's almost like this guy thinks he's also free to do what he chooses. How dare he leave based on his principles!

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[El_Che]

If you don't want to build stuff with military applications, then you know what--JUST DON'T! Er, isn't that exactly what Mitch Altman has decided to do?

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[Zerth]

If the government offers you money to do what you were going to do anyway, you should take it.

If you don't, they'll surely spend it on something you really are opposed to.

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[crazyjj]

isn't that exactly what Mitch Altman has decided to do?

Well, that and throw a public hissy-fit and abandon the organization that's doing more to encourage invention and hackerspaces than any other group out there. It's not like anyone was stopping him from speaking his mind and encouraging people to build stuff more inline with his ideals. Instead, he elected to storm off like a petulant Eric Cartman crying "If you're not going to do it *MY* way, then screw you guys!"

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[Eponymous Coward]

He should also boycott the internet because of its association with DARPA project.

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[crazyjj]

an organization who's sole purpose is the destruction of life.

That is not, and has never been, even a *primary* purpose of DARPA, much less its sole purpose.

See, it's that kind of hyperbole and silly absolutism that seems to ruin every decent goddamned movement. The Occupy movement was a great example. Started out as a perfectly reasonable movement with legitimate complaints with potentially broad appeal. But five minutes later, here come the assholes in Che Guevara t-shirts calling for the overthrow of capitalism, and BAM--it turns into yet another go-nowhere fringe movement almost overnight. And that's a real shame.

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the AC on the DARPA created internet...

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[darronb]

"His way" is to not help support an organization who's sole purpose is the destruction of life. An organization who is controlled by sociopaths bent on economic domination.

I think the pathetic thing here is the level of paranoia and mistrust towards DARPA, the military, and the government in general.

After all, "sole purpose is the destruction of life" != "The overarching objective of MENTOR is to develop and motivate a next generation cadre of system designers and manufacturing innovators by exposing them to the principles of foundry-style digital manufacturing through modern prize-based design challenges."

DARPA sponsors some great stuff. They're supplying a big chunk of much needed research funding in these difficult years. A lot of it, like this specific grant, is NOT specifically tailored towards a military application. They're trying to encourage young people to become interested in engineering... justifying it as in our national interest (which it undoubtedly is).

I don't see the military going off and doing crap on their own for their own purposes. They're still quite controlled by civilian authority. It was Bush's biases and prejudgements that led us into Iraq. While I'm sure there's a significant level of defense industry lobbying on our government leaders, they're hardly controlled by it.

The vast majority of the people that make up the military are really good people. Step outside your echo chamber sometime, it's not quite as dark outside as you think it is.

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[Quiet_Desperation]

*cough*ARPANET*cough*

Re:People should be free, but only on your terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love AC's so much I'm going to respond as AC!

You're an idealistic fool. The military's role is defense and security of the nation from hostile powers. So yes that sometimes means killing people, and yes sometimes it's used in controversial ways. It's also used to stop pirates in Somalia to ensure safe commerce, or to provide security during humanitarian crises like the 2004 tsunami in the south Pacific. The military is a well organized, disciplined force designed to fight wars, but along with that comes other capabilities used quite often in peacetime missions such as the Army Core of Engineers who have supported numerous public works projects in this country and abroad that have nothing to do with wartime, mainly because they're disciplined, highly skilled, and have a solid logistics capability to support large scale projects.

Many military projects have had civilian applications, such as the internet as is described, but also numerous advancements in cryptography, data analysis, hypermedia (Aspen Movie Map), aerospace advancements heck even frozen concentrate orange juice. Don't take your narrow idealistic view of the world as reality; do some research and see where these things come from. And by the way, don't discount the military aspects of NASA as well. People on Slashdot like to look at DARPA (military) as evil and NASA (civilian) as good, but NASA was heavily involved in the building of all the rockets that took people to the moon, put satellites into space, and were just as easily used to carry nuclear weapons as ICBMs.

Take their self righteous ass off the internet too

[onyxruby]

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.

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Re:Take their self righteous ass off the internet

[GameboyRMH]

What do you think DARPA is interested in all this stuff for? Shits and giggles?

Oh, the Irony

[Mr 44]

And in a move of supreme irony, he is glady leaving to support Chinese Hackerspaces:

Tomorrow I'm leaving for China. I organized a Hacker Trip To China. 10 of us visiting all 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?

Re:I'm wondering why

[GameboyRMH]

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.

At best they want to encourage science education so that maybe they'll have more scientists to choose from to build the weapons of tomorrow. At worst they're staging robotics competitions with obvious and only thinly-veiled combat applications. If you watch videos of these things it's not too unusual to see military brass walking among the competitors in full dress uniform, so the competitors obviously don't give a shit what they're contributing to.

its the Libertarian thang again...

[Genda]

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.

Re:Well that's fine then, boycott the internet

[sneakyimp]

People just don't realize that the path of technology is almost ALWAYS military -> business -> consumer. Wars have resulted in tremendous advances in techology. The bigger the war, the greater the advances. Some examples of military technology now used for consumer applications:
* computers
* computer networking
* cellular phone technology
* jet airplanes (even prop planes too - the Wright brothers worked for the military in WWI)
* rockets, space travel (perhaps not consumer-level yet but SOON)
* nuclear technology

Nothing -- and I mean NOTHING -- quite gets the mind racing to invent like contemplation of one's one mortality or enslavement.

I support the guy's right to boycott anything he likes over principles and sort of admire it too, but I kind of hold it against him at the same time.