Hacker News Reader

Comment by 27182818284 | Hacker News Reader

Glancing at the US portion, I find it interesting that a lot of the states that traditionally think of themselves as the "Git 'r' done" and "Do it yourself" states have fewer hacker spaces. (e.g. Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota and more)

I wonder if that is because they lack a more hackeresque spirit or because those states being rural don't need a designated hacker space.

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Anecdotal, but I think it's because they don't really need designated hacker spaces.

Growing up, we were far from wealthy, yet in the basement we had a woodshop stocked fully with tools (mostly that my dad had bought at estate auctions and soforth) and a garage stocked with every type of tool I could imagine. I think the only thing we didn't have was a welder, although several of my neighbors did.

(Grew up in MN)

Based on my experience I think that's easily explained by population density, amount of space available per capita, etc. If anything I see hackeresque spirit as more pronounced in rural areas. They aren't forced by necessity into a shared space like those in the city though, and maybe they don't consider the benefits of a shared space being that important.

The Europe situation seems more interesting. Look at the numbers(per capita) for The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and then France. The first three have many hacker spaces per capita. France is much lower. I'd expect that(from past experience), but don't have any good ideas about why it is.

I'd imagine that there is not as much of a hacker culture in terms of techy projects.

I am from Omaha, Nebraska and I can say there is plenty of it going on... as far as official places to go? Not likely. Hackerspaces seems to confirm that

With fewer people and cheap plentiful living space, it's probably just more likely to have an informal garage, basement, or attic 'hacker space'.

That is what I thinking too. Not sure why I got the downvote, but oh well.

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