Any counterculture movement inspires change in the way people perceive and interact with the world. People that reject the ideals of the mainstream and seek out something that can be uniquely their own. In my opinion, they respond to a basic need to find a culture small enough to be relevant in, large enough to be relevant to others, and who’s ideals resonate with their own.
Every generation inspires their own counter culture. Their own beatniks, hippies or rebels without a cause. These ideas are alternatively rejected, accepted, re-ordered and recombined in a multitude of permutations that make up the dance of memes in human generations as their progenitors are born, rebel, conform, and die.
The cycle of life continues, and we each live it in or own way, in our own small timeslice of the great simulation (Wave Particle Paradox) that creates the illusion (Michael_Talbot, Wikipedia: Holographic Principle, Wired) we call reality.
So people call me. They write me emails. They want me to announce that they’re coming. They work their way across the country, one hackerspace at a time. At each stop, they teach a workshop, sell some kits, and earn enough money to buy a hamburger and put gas in the car.
The next day, they wake up on some one’s couch, and leave one step closer to San Francisco California or New York New York.
They are always welcome, they bring with them eclectic knowledge and the story of a romantic, sometimes spiritual, experience. The service they provide is to keep us entertained on a quiet weekday night. They teach, we learn, together we build. It’s our mission.
They are the new “Backpacking Across Europe”. The new “Hitchhiking to Woodstock”. They spread ideas and hacker culture with them wherever they go.
Some of them, like Mitch Altman, do it to spread word of a movement. Some of them, like CMKT4, do it to pay their way to Maker Fair in California.
As a matter of fact, CMKT4 stopped by this week. We made some contact mics, learned about Piezo’s, and had a good time. After which they played some of their music for us.