London School of Financial Arts

= an open source financial hackspace

URL = http://www.lsfa-hackpace.cc

Description

Brett Scott:

"The open source hacker ethic needs to be extended and augmented though. It’s still too tied up in the politics of the outsider rogue male imagining themselves as a heroic Robin Hood figure. Rather than sticking with that stereotype, hacker culture needs to be balanced with a more warm and feminine spirit, and also needs much more focus on broader social and ecological processes.

This is what The London School of Financial Arts seeks to do, mixing analytical exploration aimed at decoding the financial system, with emotive, mischievous, artistic exploration of economic alternatives. We want it to be a place where underdogs can learn to bark." (http://stirtoaction.com/open-source-hacking/)

Discussion

Brett Scott:

"In my book I chose to apply hacker philosophy to the financial system. Finance, much like technology, often repels people through its apparent complexity. The way that technology hackers approach a complex, interconnected technology system is thus a useful model for thinking about how to approach a complex, interconnected financial system, too.

The act of technology hacking initially involves exploring a piece of technology that opens up the ability to jam its workings, as well as to build your own version of it. Using that as an analogy, financial hacking involves exploration of the financial system that opens up the ability to design campaigns that jam its workings, and also allows us to start building our own DIY versions of the system.

The term ‘hacker’ has a subversive appeal that can capture the imagination of both activists and entrepreneurs. Indeed, it’s a useful archetype to use when trying to engage the entrepreneurial imagination of activists who need to build economic alternatives, whilst simultaneously engaging the activist imagination of entrepreneurs who need to be more critical when designing and building new things.

True hacking fuses together notions of creativity with rebellion. A hack is like the act of kicking down a door to make a table. It is not merely rebellion (kicking down a door), or merely creativity (making a table). It’s the art of blending the two into a seamless act of creative rebellion or rebellious creativity." (http://stirtoaction.com/open-source-hacking/)