ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that hackerspaces enable the performance of new kinds of affective relations – relations that are mediated through a combination of online and offline encounters. Online discussion was seen as merging seamlessly with face-to-face community, with relatively little distinction made between interactions within the hackerspace and those mediated by the email list. But digital communication could also be used more strategically, as a way of ensuring that experiences of intimate community within the hackerspace were not marred by negatives such as bureaucracy or what was called 'drama' – interpersonal conflicts, arguments or unspoken tensions. Hackerspaces were spaces for intimacy in that they enabled deep, committed and emotional relationships with other actors – relationships that were viewed as impinging on the personal. The maker movement is in many ways about a self-conscious return to engagement with the physical world.
