Shared Culture in Biohack Academy and its footsteps
Yosuke Tsuchiya
Shared Culture of hackers
There is a shared culture by hackers, whom expert programmers and networking wizards are called as, and those hackers open their own technologies and share them on the Internet. Hackers build the Internet and most of based technology of Computer Science. Hackers resist the monopolization of technology by big tech such as IBM, Microsoft and so on. Sharing source code or knowledges are based on this hacker’s culture.
Taking over to Fab and DIYbio movements
And, Fab Lab Networks, a network of digital fabrication, consist of this shared culture, as Neil Gershenfeld, who called as the father of Fab Lab, teach its importance of sharing documentations in his class “How to make almost anything” in MIT. The BioHack Academy is organized by Waag Society in Amsterdam where is one of the longest Fab Lab in the world. In this sense, the mind of BioHack Academy is also under the influence of this shared culture of Fab Lab Network, as there are so many kinds of DIY Bio hack hardware/software on the BioHack Academy GitHub, and students who belong to BioHack Academy must make their own documentation website and share what they do in each assignment.
Sharing as attitude
However, we should keep in mind that it is not only outstanding technicians, the DIY experts or Bio hack predecessors but also citizens who maintain these shared cultures. The most important things are the attitude based on freedom and voluntary mutual help to solve problems and build things. This time, students who belong to the BioHack Academy in BioClub Tokyo, have their own different background, students, engineers, researchers, artists and so on. Those students are voluntary helped each other. One student first learns the methods of PCR, then this student taught it to another students, then students wrote a detailed documents on the Internet. Those are exactly the attitude of shared culture. I hope we will grow and maintain this shared community more in the future.