Hackers seek physical space in a virtual world

The Irish Times, April 4 2009 Dublin will soon be home to a space for hackers to congregate and get creative, write Lenny Antonelli and Jason Walsh

It's not a word that's used much in polite company – mention the term hacker and it conjures up nothing but negative images. In today's wired world of interconnected computer networks, email, SMS messages, social networking and online banking the stereotype of the computer hacker hasn't kept-up with the times.

At best the outdated image of the 1983 film War Games comes to mind: intelligent kids getting into serious trouble while attempting mischievous pranks. At worst, hackers are only a step away from terrorists, intent on destroying important computer networks and collecting enough personal data to make Google blush.

The reality is, as always, rather different. The personal computer as we know it today would not exist without the work of hackers – mainframe computers share less DNA with a typical PC or Mac than a pocket calculator does and, famously, Apple Computer was founded by a pair of hackers, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, in a Californian garage.  More recently, the Linux operating system currently revolutionising the business world is entirely the work of hackers. So much for tabloid visions of "cyber crime".

Dublin will soon be home to a permanent space for computer hackers to congregate and get creative. Named Tóg, Irish for build, this new space will be Ireland's contribution to the growing international movement of "hackerspaces".

Sat in the elegant, if incongruous, surroundings of Dubin's Westlin hotel explaining their plans to the Irish Times, Tóg's Jeff Rowe and Robert Fitzsimons emphasise that hacking is about curiosity: the desire to understand how technology works and the creative urge to build and modify gadgets. The only legal issue at stake here is the rather prosaic one of voiding warranties.

Fitzsimons is perfectly comfortable with the word hacker: "I'll use "hacker" and somebody else will use it and there'll be a completely different interpretation," he said. "My hacking is out in the open. I have the 2600.ie domain – If anybody wants to find out who the hackers in Ireland are, my name is plastered on the site."

Hacking, Fitzsimons says, is a form of self-education in a fast-moving world: "It's about learning things about the electronic environment we live in."

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the omnipresence of technology today, talk among the group does turns to political issues. Hackers, as a group, tend opposed to technology for technology's sake if it doesn't bring anything to the table. E-voting, for example, has been roundly rejected by hackers as needlessly complex and fundamentally unsafe: "The thing that gets me about e-voting is that these computers are essentially black boxes, but a vote isn't a black box. Physical voting is a very transparent process – with electronic devices it's a bit of magnetism somewhere, it's a bit, a 1 or a 0 somewhere," said Rowe.

Speaking to the Irish Times, technology consultant Colin Sweetman explained the term hackers needs to be approached with caution: "The prehistory of even some Microsoft products shows there were developed by hackers working for fun in garages and then bought-out," he said. "A lot of the actual malicious "hacking" is done by what are called "script kiddies" messing around with software they didn't write and don't really understand."

Sweetman also poses an interesting question about the source of malicious computer viruses and scams: "Nobody knows how many "black-hat" hackers in former Soviet states and in China are actually, at least tacitly, supported by their governments," he said.

Scams, industrial espionage and schemes for geopolitical domination are a world away from the reality of computer hacking as practiced in Ireland. Tóg's Jeff Rowe, who spends his days researching devices for the visually-impaired at Dublin City University, is a walking, talking example of the kind of self-motivated learning and playing that hackers engage in. Rowe's work is useful, interesting, technical and difficult. His play may be less important but it shares all of the other characteristics: he is currently designing an exact replica of a 1980s arcade machine in order to play old video games. "I want it to look and feel authentic," he said. "There's no point in just having a desktop unit. Half of the fun is two people standing up against the unit."

An avid cyclist, Fitzsimons, perhaps unsurprisingly a computer programmer by profession, is working on various gadgets for his bike: "Because I cycle and there's potholes everywhere, I'm interested in putting sensors on my bike so you can measure the road surface and how closely cars overtake you," he said.

Fitzsimons and Rowe are among 16 technology enthusiasts, many of them supporters of 2600 magazine, the technology underground's premier periodical, planning to open the Tóg hackerspace in Dublin – a home for hackers to work on projects, collaborate and socialise.

As unlikely as it sounds, similar spaces have sprung up across Europe and the US in recent years. For Fitzsimons, Rowe and the rest of the Irish group it was a trip to the 25th congress of Germany's Chaos Computer Club, one of the most influential hacker groups, that crystallised the idea.

"It really gave us the final push," said Rowe "We decided to get a group and start planning and get it in motion."

Fitzsimons sees the space being conducive to technological creativity and collaboration, but also a place for hackers to relax: "I'd like to see an area with couches and TVs and X-Boxes or whatever, and you wouldn't necessarily have computers in there. And then you'd have another room with computers; people [will] have somewhere to go and get away from computers."

In terms of technological projects, Rowe stresses it will be a learning curve for everyone. "Maybe just one or two people know how to do complex projects [so] it'll start off with making an LED display that flashes different lights and you can program different messages, and then it'll slowly build up and up."

Fitzsimons would also like to see woodwork and kitchen facilities in the space – allowing members to partake in other creative, hands-on activities unrelated to computers. "Some of us like cooking and some of the hacker spaces even have a Sunday dinner," Fitzsimons said, mentioning woodwork, paper-craft and baking as other possible activities. "I hope it wouldn't be the case where people would just hang out and play computer games and not actually participate in the idea of making something or doing something slightly creative with their time and space."

For now, the group will have to settle for "booting-up" in a single room – with 16 members paying €50 a month towards rent, the group is hoping to find a suitable space in central Dublin by May 1. Once the space is up and running the group will hold weekly public meetings for prospective members. "We're at the point where we feel that no new people are going to join until we actually have the space," Rowe said. Once the space is up and running, the group is confident it can quickly attract new members – and enough income to start looking for larger premises.

At a time when more and more communication is moving online, it is ironic that a group of technology enthusiasts would be so anxious to find a physical space to communicate in but Tóg has a rationale: "The highest bandwidth [mode of communication] is obviously fact to face," Rowe said. "It's all about the community. It's the community that drives all these sorts of things. We'd be nothing if it was just a space and there was no community, and no-one knew each other in the space."

Fitzsimons elaborates: "As Jeff was saying, it's about the community, and about that community building and making and creating. If that involves technology, brilliant. If it doesn't, brilliant."

If the information economy means anything at all it requires motivated, intelligent and creative players, just what Tóg and the hackerspaces movement are intent on creating.

Urbex Factor

For many of us, a day exploring Dublin might involve a picnic in the Iveagh Gardens, or a trip to Glasnevin Cemetery... For others, it means investigating the hidden interiors of the city’s abandoned buildings. Lenny Antonelli meets some intrepid “urban explorers” Published by The Dubliner, April 16, 2010

Most people visit Dun Laoghaire for some sea air, a walk along the pier or a trip to the market – only a rare few go to explore the dark innards of the derelict Dun Laoghaire Baths. Dave is an “urban explorer” – one of a growing number of Dubliners who venture into the city’s derelict buildings, tunnels and other hidden spaces. A young photographer from Tallaght, he asked us not to reveal his surname – trespassing is illegal, after all.

Dave isn’t some strange creature of the night though, just a 20-something armed with the tools of his trade – a camera, a torch and a portable sat nav programmed to his favourite exploration spots. He describes the inside of the baths: a warren of dark passages, rusting stairs and decrepit pools, saunas and changing rooms, with badly painted cartoon characters on the walls and drug paraphernalia scattered on the floor. Once among the most popular bathing spots in Ireland, they closed for good in 1997.

It was here that Dave’s enthusiasm for urban exploration – shortened to ‘urbex’ by its enthusiasts – was born. “Me and my friends were just walking about, we just saw the place and thought we’d head in,” he says. His curiosity was piqued, but he thought there wouldn’t be much more to explore after this. He was wrong. “I’d say we’ve seen about 100 places over the last couple of years.” The photographs that accompany this piece were taken by Dave and Tarquin Blake – more about him anon.

Dave’s favourite derelict building is Bolands Mills on Grand Canal Dock, though it’s now inaccessible. The imposing flour mill was occupied by Éamon de Valera and others during the 1916 Rising; the company went into receivership in 1984. He says that unlike other abandoned buildings, there’s little graffiti inside – and the views from the roof are superb.

“All the machinery is still in place; there’s just a really good history to it. It’s so big you’d spend a whole day there. Every time we went we found something new, a whole new section that we missed.”

Redcourt House in Clontarf, which Dave managed to visit and photograph before it was demolished, has a grizzly past; it was the site of two murders over the years, and was dubbed the “Hammer House of Horrors” by locals.

Dave’s closest brush with the law came at a derelict industrial estate in Tallaght. He and his friends were exploring an abandoned factory when a voice boomed out of a speaker, telling him he was being watched, and that the guards had been called. “We legged it and ran all along the Luas track,” he says. “It’s a shame, there’s no way you can do places like that anymore.”

Although breaking into private or public property is illegal under the 2002 Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, Dave makes sure to operate by a simple code of conduct – don’t damage or take anything. The only time he broke this was when he used a crowbar to prise open a window of the derelict La Touche Hotel in Greystones, parts of which were damaged by a fire in 2006. Inside, he photographed the old restaurant, nightclub, conference room and some of the dozens of bedrooms. Others might have been tempted to take some of the valuable furniture; all Dave wanted to leave with was photos.

He’s explored countless other abandoned buildings – Grangegorman Asylum, the Clontarf and Blackrock baths, the Hellfire club in Rathfarnham, Martello towers – but is still keen for more. He’d love to get inside the old mine near Killiney beach – the passage in is small, but he’s heard that there’s a huge cavern inside with a bridge stretching across. He’d like to explore some of the ghost offices and apartment blocks left by the building boom too, but presumes they’re all heavily secured. Dave’s dream exploration surprises me: “The place I’ve always wanted to see is Chernobyl – a whole abandoned city. There are animals living in office blocks and trees growing up through houses, crazy stuff.”

The term ‘urban exploration’ was coined in 1996 by Infiltration, a zine dedicated to the subject, but its history stretches back much further. In 1793, Philibert Aspairt got lost while exploring the Parisian catacombs by candlelight. – his body was found 11 years later just feet from the exit that eluded him, and he’s now considered the world’s first “cataphile.” American poet Walt Whitman described a visit to an abandoned railway tunnel in New York in The Brooklyn Standard in 1884. In the 1950s, a group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began exploring steam tunnels and rooftops around the campus, a practice they called ‘hacking.’ In 1994, the Diggers of the Underground Planet – an urban exploration group in Moscow – claimed to have found the city’s fabled Metro-2 subway system, allegedly built so that Stalin and his officials could evacuate the city quickly in case of attack.

In 2001, urban explorers found a maze of utility tunnels under Minneapolis and its sister city Saint Paul – they dubbed it “the labyrinth” and explored and mapped it fully over two years. And during the noughties, urban explorers from across North America organised conventions they deceptively titled ‘Office Products Expo.’ In the past, urban explorers communicated through zines, but the Internet dominates now, with message boards such as urbanexploration.ie, 28dayslater.co.uk and online magazines like Jinx and Explonation.

So far, urbanexploration.ie doesn’t get much traffic, according to Dave, and there’s not a community in Ireland as such – more individuals and small groups of friends who go out together. He’s an old hand at urban exploration at this stage, and is interested in its natural offshoot too – rural exploration. He’s visited castles in the greater Dublin area, and is thinking of compiling a book of his photography. “I went out last week with my dad and went to this place at the back of a housing estate in Navan. It’s like a big mansion ruin, it’s amazing... A demesne, there are derelict farmhouses around it. It’s just crazy that stuff like that is there.”

Photographer Tarquin Blake is an experienced rural explorer – his first book, Abandoned Mansions of Ireland, to be published later this year, will feature photographs and historical background on 50 derelict mansions across the country. Working from old 19th-century maps to find the sites of abandoned mansions, Tarquin was blown away by what he found. “The loss of heritage and architecture is pretty staggering. Some of the mansion houses rate among the largest and grandest ever built in Europe. And they’re completely in ruin now.”

One of the mansions he photographed is Westown House near Naul, though all that really remains now is a shell. “It’s hard to picture the place in all its grandeur, but it was said to be the finest mansion in Fingal.” Built in the early-18th Century, the house was owned by the Hussey family, who couldn’t afford to stay there after the Land Commission took it over in the 1920s. Various tenants rented it in the following decades, including former Fianna Fáil TD PJ Fogarty – they had the run of its 32 bedrooms, three kitchens, orchards and walled gardens. “Apparently a guest fell from one of the upper windows and was found the following morning in a pool of blood,” Tarquin says. “His ghost is said to haunt the place.”

Tarquin started out exploring Magdalene Laundries and asylums in Cork city before switching his focus to the countryside. He’s photographed various Dublin city buildings too, but says rural exploration is a lot more relaxed. “You need to have your wits about you and be a lot more cautious in the city!”

We remind you that exploring abandoned buildings is illegal – do not try this at home please. Tarquin has met enthusiasts more interested in stealing than documenting, but for most urban explorers the goal is simply to capture the history and decline of forgotten buildings, and to record places that we all get close to but never see.

Tarquin is protective of his favourite buildings, and admits he sometimes prefers to be vague about their exact locations to keep them hidden. “I guess the places are special because they have been kind of forgotten.”