Episode 2 (2024) Janis Lena Meißner: From “makers-in-the-making” to “empowering hacks”

Janis Lena Meißner from The Vienna University of Technology
shares stories and insights from practical work with people who
are usually not included in the Maker movement.

Despite its promises of technology democratization, the Maker
Movement still lacks diversity. To address this disparity, we
might deliberately turn to „unexpected users“ of maker tools and
reimagine core hacker values for subversive practices together
with them. 


This episode is about hacking the ways in which Making is usually
imagined to be performed. It offers reflections on the
“Empowering Hacks” project, my long-term collaboration with two
men with disabilities on fabricating their own ideas. Our project
began with the mission “to produce disabled tools at a cheaper
rate but with a more customisable outcome” and so we collaborated
on designing, modelling and 3D-printing “wheelchair golfballs”
and other assistive gadgets. Externally, “Empowering Hacks” was
motivated by creating positive change for others. Internally, our
processes of mentoring and production were configured around the
interests and social roles of my collaborators. Disability was
not perceived as an impediment but as an opportunity to
reimagining Making practices. 


My reflections are rooted in a key distinction between “Hacking”
and “Making”. While Making encompasses a wide range of practices
using digital fabrication tools, Hacking denotes self-directed
technological action for chosen purposes. In “Empowering Hacks”,
my collaborators did not identify as makers, however as
makers-in-the-making they had freedom to figure out their own
ways to make. Their hacking became a performative and material
challenge to ableist assumptions about disabled people not being
able to be designers or creators. The dialectic podcast is an
opportunity to further unpack the subversive capacities of
reimagining making through hacking.

This episode is a live recording from Hacker Cultures! The
Podcast Panel Season 3 panel organized at the European
Association for the study of Science and Technology and Society
for Social Studies of Science EASST/4S 2024
conference in Amsterdam on 2024-07-16. The hosts are Paula
Bialski, Andreas Bischof and Mace Ojala. Audio production by
Heights Beats at Hotmilk Records, who also produced the theme
track. We are grateful for Chemnitz University of Technology for
funding.