Hackathon
= "intensive, often multi-day events that bring technologists and other experts together to brainstorm and build new tools". [1]
Description
Civic Tech Hackatons
Jacob Bruggerman:
‘Hackathons” are intensive, often multi-day events that bring technologists and other experts together to brainstorm and build new tools. This genre of gathering was inspired by the “hacker conferences” that spread alongside personal computing in the 1980s and ’90s. The hackathon model prioritizes openness, decentralization, hands-on cooperation, and the free exchange of ideas. Participants roll up their sleeves and troubleshoot technological solutions. Today, there are tens of thousands of hackathons per year.Despite the regular demonization of hackers as criminals in American media, by the end of the 20th century they came to embody the freedom afforded by technological prowess in computerized society. They were the antiheroes of the internet age—gunslingers in cyberspace, homesteaders on the electronic frontier. Futurists cast the hacker as the embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit and the torch-bearer of the American dream, and Silicon Valley gurus like Paul Graham described them as artisan-technicians to rival Thomas Edison. The influence wielded by the tech industry site Hacker News is a testament to the hacker’s cultural capital.The 2000s saw the stock of Silicon Valley soar in America. Glossy magazine profiles and popular shows like Silicon Valley put the place and the people who lived there on the country’s cultural map. Meanwhile, initiatives like “One Laptop Per Child” promised that cheap digital devices would democratize education across the world. From Arab Spring protesters to hacktivist groups like Anonymous, tech-savvy activists seemed poised to establish a vanguard of democracy in the backyards of dictators. (Even though those hopes were quickly dashed.) Hopes for a future of far-flung supply chains, high-tech manufacturing, and novel forms of knowledge work for college graduates were buoyed by a belief in progress driven by technology.
(https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-obama-era-roots-of-doge/?ref=compact-newsletter)