nytimes article on military money for hackerspaces - TokyoHackerSpace

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Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 14:11:38 +0900
Message-ID: <CAAb4S6VhsGWYEF3=hB0ibLc320=9CSfRNyt+pQPpaVGdzaP...@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [THS:20566] nytimes article on military money for hackerspaces
From: Chris Harrington <chris.harrington...@gmail.com>
To: tokyohackerspace@googlegroups.com
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Like any other organization, the military has cool guys like Dave
Sonntag, normal guys like you and me, and then a minority of shallow
morons who just want to get promoted and have lots of ribbons over
their pockets. My personal experience was that the ratio was somewhat
better in the military then it ever was in any company I ever saw.

Remember, people who have a modicum of talent at something don't join
the military just for the paycheck. Most have at least some sense of
duty, which makes them generally nice people under the right
circumstances.

Civilian controlled militaries in long standing Democracies do not
usually attract "conquer the world" or "big brother" personality
types.

The problem is the double edged sword of civilian control. Absolutely
necessary, but at the same time, the root of most evil when it comes
to military stuff.
Civilian control is what brings about all the outsourcing of basic
services (and even security) that's been going on in the past few
decades. Any good military administrator would much rather do
everything in-house, I'm sure. Civilian control is also responsible
for promoting the occasional psychopathic high ranking officer out of
political expediency.

The picture of the shady military types working in the shadows on
bizarre and dangerous technologies to harm grandmothers is, on the one
hand, a cliche, and on the other hand, those aren't really "military"
types per se, that kind of stuff is usually done by civilian agencies
that are sometimes staffed by military dropouts, or in other words the
real assholes who weren't good enough people to keep their jobs in the
service.

I'd say the trick to dealing with military funding would be to keep it
short. Reason being is that personnel changes are frequent. You may
like the people who bring you the offer, but they will be completely
replaced in three to five years and you may end up working for someone
you can't stand. Ideally, only get funding for short term projects.

Chris Harrington
chris.harrington...@gmail.com
http://chris.harrington.jp/
http://gplus.to/chrisharrington
090-8812-8911


On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Richard Frankum
<richard.fran...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 8:50 AM, MRE <epreme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Initially we though these school spaces would be to do whatever.
>> Now it looks like theyll have design challenges to compeat in.
>
> Were you not paying attention when the DARPA program was announced?
> "The MENTOR effort is part of the DARPA=92s Adaptive Vehicle Make
> program portfolio and is aimed at engaging high school students in a
> series of collaborative distributed manufacturing and design
> experiments."
>
> http://blog.makezine.com/2012/01/19/darpa-mentor-award-to-bring-making-to=
-education/
>
>> Shady?
>
> I hardly think so. DARPA sponsoring competitions sounds like a good
> way to foster low-cost high-quality entries. They've got a purpose,
> and it ain't just giving money away.
>
> --
> --Richard Frankum
>
> --
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