Makoko 2035: An Encyclopedia

Hacker Spaces + Maker Movement

Hacker spaces in Makoko are essential to the creation, alteration, and maintenance of various technologies that are indispensable for daily life. These spaces grew out of Makoko's Floating School Network, and are the result of the labor of some of the FSN's first graduates. Upon leaving school, many tech-minded graduates found that there were few opportunities for them on the mainland, and so they turned to repurposing and recycling materials and technologies both as an occupation and as a means for bettering their environment for themselves and their families. Hands on learning, and real-world problem solving are the dominant mode of knowledge production in the hacker spaces—a mode that these makers inherited directly from their education in the Floating Schools. As a result, Makoko has a growing community of critical thinkers who, having grown up with regular access to the Net, have become profoundly autodidactic. 

The tensions between Makoko and the mainland have made it difficult for the hackers of Makoko to share their hardware with the maker spaces in Lagos. While some hackers from Makoko brave being arrested by "trashing" on shore—scavenging for parts or making deals with low-level city sanitation workers—smuggling some of their larger creations out of Makoko is much more difficult. Software, on the other hand, is easily shared on line and there is constant online communication between the hacker spaces of Makoko and those in Lagos proper.

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