Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and
with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak
to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole.
Christopher A. Le Dantec
Created in China:
The Makings of
China’s Hackerspace
Community
Silvia Lindtner
University of California, Irvine | lindtner@ics.uci.edu
David Li
XinCheJian | taweili@xinchejian.com
Hackerspaces are shared studios
that bring together people committed to the free and open sharing of
software and hardware, as well as
ideas and knowledge. As of April
2012, there are more than 500 active
hackerspaces in existence worldwide, making them a global phenomenon [ 1]. A typical studio will be
equipped with tools that allow for
experimenting with the physical/
digital boundary—laser cutters, 3-D
printers, microcontroller kits, and
so forth. Many hackerspaces also
host educational workshops where
these tools are used to teach others
about manipulating the physical
environment through software, or
vice versa. The global hackerspace
movement has helped proliferate a
“maker culture” that revolves around
both technological and social practices of creative play, peer production, a commitment to open source
principles, and a curiosity about the
inner workings of technology [ 2, 3].
• Figure 1. Promotional flyers for the
HAXLR8R program.
In September 2010, China’s first
hackerspace opened its doors
in Shanghai under the name
XinCheJian 新车间 (literal translation: new workshop, or new factory).
Only a year after the founding of
XinCheJian, the Shanghai government announced a call for proposals
to build 100 “innovation houses”
(chuangxin wu 创新屋) to be supported by government funding.
Although the official document [ 4]
described this initiative as part of
a larger effort to build a citywide
platform for supporting popular science work and innovation, national
and international media interpreted this move as an endorsement of China’s fledgling maker
culture by Chinese politicians.
What is going on here? What
motivated politicians in China to
support the growth of a community
that has come to be known for its
commitments to a do-it-yourself
(DIY) approach toward making technologies and to the free and open
exchange of knowledge? How does
maker culture manifest itself in
