Mitch Altman

Spectrum

Inventor and self-described hacker Mitch Altman talks about Noisebridge, the San Francisco hackerspace he co-founded. Altman is responsible for co-founding 3-ware is now the President and CTO of Cornfield Electronics. His many inventions include TV-B-Gone and NeuroDreamer sleep mask.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Spectrum's next

Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k l x Berkeley, a biweekly

Speaker 1: 30 minute program bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news.

Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift on today's show. Rick Carnesi and I interview Mitch Altman. [00:00:30] Mitch is an inventor and self-described hacker. He cofounded the company three where and is now the president and CTO of cornfield electronics. We're talking to him about Noisebridge, the San Francisco hackerspace that he co founded, as well as some of his many inventions. These include the TVB gone a remote that turns off most TVs and his recently successful Kickstarter project, the neuro dreamer sleep mask. Mitch Altman. Welcome to spectrum. [00:01:00] Thanks. Would you mind telling us sort of that career path?

Speaker 4: How I got to sitting here today? Uh, I've been a geek all my life. You know, I dreamed about this stuff when I was a little kid. I actually did a, I remember having this recurring dream where I saw the inside of my mom's radio, which, uh, they were tubes. I didn't know what tooks were though. They were just glowing. They look cool. And I dreamed about pushing it off the counter to see what was in it. And in my dreams I actually did it. But in real life [00:01:30] I was always too timid. But I really wanted to see what was inside. And eventually I started taking apart my parents things and somehow they let me and eventually I learned to put them back together, making my own things from scratch. It's been fun in electronics, I always want to know how things work. I mean that's, that's what makes us geeks tick, you know.

Speaker 4: But the thing that fascinated me the most was electronics. So I started playing with wires and alligator clips and putting forks into electrical outlets and having my parents scrape me off the ceiling [00:02:00] and learning from my mistakes, learning and growing. And eventually I was making my own intercoms between my brother's bunk bed and mine below him in high school, making an electronic bong. And, uh, that was one of the things that actually got me talking to other kids rather than just being alone geek. So, uh, inventing, making things. It's been part of my life since I can remember thinking. But you've also had this entrepreneurial spirit as well, I suppose. Yeah. And I'm not really sure [00:02:30] where that came from. Maybe from my parents. My father was an architect, you know, and I see a lot of what I do as art, you know, expressing ourselves truthfully and doing things in a way that give other people an opportunity to think about themselves in the world around them.

Speaker 4: And my father did his art architecture and it made him a living without really being conscious of it. That's probably the path that I followed. I actually quit the job that I had created for myself, which was consulting in electronics [00:03:00] for usually small companies. But I quit that so I could explore ways of doing more of what I loved and that's how I came across TV be gone. And I was lucky enough that it actually makes me a living. It's really cool to be able to make a living by doing what you love, making enough money, doing what you love to keep doing what you love. I mean, that's my idea of success. Where does the inspiration come from your projects? Well, that's a good question. Where does inspiration come from? You know, obviously, uh, other people can be inspiring random [00:03:30] events in our lives and people are a great random elements in our lives.

Speaker 4: And if we relate to people when they throw something at us that really sticks in our [inaudible] and uh, nibbles away at us, uh, it's like sticking in there. Maybe it's subconscious. Eventually it becomes an idea for a project that screaming to come out, TV gone. I got the idea of sitting in a Chinese restaurant in 1993 talking with some friends and we were there [00:04:00] to talk to each other, not to watch TV. And yet there was a TV on and we were watching the TV and that was crazy. So we started talking about that and then I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could just turn off these horrible distractions everywhere I went? And instantly I knew I could because I'm a geek. Of course. It took me 10 years to get to a point in my life where I had time and energy to do it.

Speaker 4: And I'm glad I did. And I had to make that time though. You know, inspiration is really important. Ideas are really important, but they don't go anywhere unless [00:04:30] you make the time to do something with them. And you just prioritize it because you're passionate about it. Or how, how do you make sure that you actually finish something? You start o finishing what you start. Well, you know, I think that's overrated. I've done zillions of projects as have we all that we have that I haven't finished. That's great. You know, and if I'm not motivated to finish it, that leaves time for doing something else. TV began I think is the first project in my entire life where I actually finished it. Totally. And I had to, if I was going to make [00:05:00] it a product, you know, and uh, I don't think we've mentioned TV beyond for people that don't know, it is a key chain that turns TVs off in public places and it really does work.

Speaker 4: And I did it cause I got rid of TV in my life at home. I am a TV addict. Uh, I watched it every waking moment of my life as an unhappy child, but I didn't have to keep doing it later in life. And I chose not to, but in public, no one chooses those things to be on. People don't leave their home to watch television except me for sports [00:05:30] bars or something. But I don't like bars and I don't like sports so I don't go to those but everywhere else. So I made it so I could turn them off and other people wanted them. And then when their friends wanted them in friends of friends, that's when I decided I would make a bunch. So, um, I started it like many projects and it got on a roll unlike many projects. But I actually was so passionate about it continually and I had so many people that are kept asking me when's that going to be done? That that probably helped me follow through and actually finish it [00:06:00] and get it to a point where it's a manufacturable product.

Speaker 2: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum Inka LX Berkeley. Our guest is inventor Mitch Altman.

Speaker 4: And once you get something at that point, what's next? Do you tinker and invent more stuff or do you spend time supporting TVB gone or, yeah. Well when you do what you love, all sorts of [00:06:30] interesting things open up that you might notice where you wouldn't if you're consumed doing something that just exhausts you like a job, you know, you don't like that too. Many of us, unfortunately on our planet are in that position. I have been working on many other projects along the way. I started getting into hacker conferences and maker fairs as a result of TVB gone. People invited me to these things and I, um, would give talks, [00:07:00] which is kind of bizarre for me. A totally introverted geek, terrified of public speaking. Like so many other of us introverted geeks. But, uh, it turned out I liked it. It makes it easier to talk about something you love.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't like being pedantic. Uh, I like making things fun and if other people relate then maybe they'll learn something, maybe make a new choice in their life that serves them better and I don't want to tell anyone else what to do. Well sometimes I do, but I like making it more fun for people to choose for themselves what's good for themselves. [00:07:30] I found a place where at hacker conferences, at maker fairs where I could teach doing what I really love, which is soldering and making cool things with electronics and that led to me finding things to teach with. So I started making my own little kits for total beginners and I started doing that by hacking other people's kids and then making my own and that's been supplementing my income a little bit, but mostly it's been paying for me to be able to travel around the world and teach doing this, which I also [00:08:00] love.

Speaker 4: That led to going to more hacker conferences and maker fairs and things related and going to hacker spaces that existed but not too many back then. Back then was 2007 okay. The first maker fair was 2006 which led me to meet people who invited me to the first hacker conference also in 2006 that I went to a hope in New York every other year. And I've been actually helping organize those now, which is another thing I make time for at one [00:08:30] of these hacker conferences in Germany, put on by the chaos computer club who have been responsible for creating hackerspaces in Germany and then the world for over a quarter century now of in 2007 it was about a quarter century of that and they gave a presentation on how to start your own and I was way inspired to come home and do that in my home town and with my friend Jake, we Noisebridge and instantly we just put out the word and we got lots [00:09:00] of way cool people to help and with our ideas and their ideas collected more people.

Speaker 4: And Noisebridge was a just a natural growth out of all of our enthusiasm and inspiration for having the energy and the high really of being at one of these hacker conferences where people do what they love, explore it, they love Sharon, teach and learn from each other. Uh, but not just once a year, uh, but every day, all night, all day, all year round. [00:09:30] And Wow. Hundreds of us go through there every week. And it constantly amazes me how many cool people are doing cool things there now. And what kinds of things happen at Noisebridge? It's very diverse. A, it's not just tech. You know, I teach soldering and electronics, but [inaudible] Mondays. Yeah. So every Monday, uh, since 2007, I've been teaching how to solder and I love doing that. I'm really good at it by now too. And when I'm not in town, I'm on the road. Other people do [00:10:00] it on Wednesdays.

Speaker 4: There's a similar kind of thing for craft and art folks to get together and that's called scow sewing, crafting or whatever. Also on Mondays is people. There's someone who's teaching a class on how to do your own website. There's a python language class, there's German language, human language class, there's a space exploration program, there's food classes. We have a full kitchen, we have a dark room, there's lithography classes. He printing three d printers. We got lots of those. And we understood [00:10:30] sewing machines and lots of cool, uh, electronics equipment as well as the machine shop and laser cutter and a library. We've got classrooms, we've got events, spaces, all this and more. And everything happens just because people think it would be cool to do. And they, they do it and people help. And this is just one of about a thousand hackerspaces in the world. Now it's another thing I love doing is going around helping people start these supportive communities, which are hackerspaces for people to explore and do what they love and hopefully even make a living out of it [00:11:00] so they can do what they enjoy and find fulfillment in their lives.

Speaker 4: You know, now there's only a thousand in the world. What will the world be like when there's a million? Uh, more opportunities for people to do. Way more cool things. Earlier guests on our show did talk about the makerspace project of which you're fairly vocal critics. So can you say why you're a critic? I wouldn't say I'm a critic. I love maker fair and I love make magazine. They've created opportunities for so many people and my life has been [00:11:30] changed for the positive by it and so it was so many other people and it will continue to be that kind of positive role model for others as well. They recently sought and received a grant for $10 million from DARPA, which is an arm of a research arm of the u s military. Their goal is to help create new technology for the u s military. That's their stated goal. So they have a bunch of grants now available.

Speaker 4: Most of them are because they [00:12:00] see the u s education system as horribly flawed as do I. People in the u s military see that just as clearly as many of us too. And making grants for hands on learning is a way to give more people opportunity to at least have a start and becoming high quality engineers, which they need to further the goals of their organizations, which is in my view, simply put to hurt and kill people. Of course, that's [00:12:30] my personal view. You know, other people will see it differently. What I would love to see happen is for people to explore and continually reevaluate what it means to them to receive funding from organizations or people whose goals don't align with your own cause. There's consequences, so anything we do, there's consequences. There's pluses and minuses for everything. When you accept funds from sources that have goals that don't [00:13:00] align with your own, of course you're helping your goals because you have funding to do so, but you're also helping the goals of the funding source, which don't align with your own.

Speaker 4: How do you actually weigh the pluses and minuses in that way? It's not easy, but for me, after struggling with it for months, I can't feel good about associating myself with helping the goals of DARPA. Even though good things come from what DARPA has [00:13:30] done, I would rather put my energy directly into doing things that I believe are helping people rather than helping the goals of an organization that does things that I find well, use the word reprehensible, so I'm not trying to talk anyone into not associating with makerfair or make magazine. I still respect many of the people at make and a maker fair, great deal. I think they'll do great things. I just can't feel [00:14:00] good about helping myself and I really would hope that people do consider the funding sources because it does change what you'll do maybe consciously, maybe subconsciously. So what are you willing to do that you might not have done to make it more likely to get funding renewed funding?

Speaker 4: What are they going to stop doing that they might have done because it doesn't look so good to the funding source? I see these as very, very much related. It's really important [00:14:30] to explore these things before making a conscious choice about whether to accept these funding sources. Maybe it's worth it. Maybe it isn't. It's up to each and every individual. I need a couple points of clarification just to make sure we got everything right. Yeah. So the DARPA funding at all go to maker fair to your knowledge? Uh, sort of the, with some of the other projects that those same people were doing well before making my choice. I talk to the person who started maker fair and make magazine, [00:15:00] uh, Dale Dougherty and he's a great guy. We've done lots of cool things through the years together. And my main goal was to explore the possibility of helping with maker fair without being associated with DARPA funding. And the funding that they got is for a program they call mentor program a but that's intertwined with making makerfair. So there's no way to dissociate the funding

Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:15:30] this is spectrum k a l x Berkeley. Our guest is Mitch Altman, Co founder of the hackerspace Noisebridge.

Speaker 4: I also see this theme of wanting to help people. So for instance, you host these depression and Geek meetups. Life isn't all totally wonderful. Life is full of things that are amazingly wonderful and rapturous and blissful and it's full of things [00:16:00] that totally suck and anything in between up, down and all around. And any given life, no matter how wonderful your life is, uh, there's ups and downs. And I, um, started off my life as a totally depressed geek and, um, I was brutally bullied. I was, you know, I'm introverted geeks when I was a little kid, did not farewell. And not only that, but, uh, I was an am queer and little kids take any difference big and small, and they brutalize [00:16:30] people for it. Uh, life was horrible for me and my parents were terrible parents. Lucky for me. They turned out to be cool people as adults for me when I was at adult.

Speaker 4: And uh, no matter what childhood can be rough for people and there's unhealed stuff and we carry all of that with us if we survive into adulthood. And here we all are as adults living our lives, hopefully exploring and doing what we love with the help of, uh, our supportive communities, including hackerspaces, but still there was a huge [00:17:00] amount of depression in geek communities. Uh, last November a friend of mine killed himself. It was the first time in my life where I felt close to someone who killed themselves. And, uh, it's rough. It really, really sucks. There's nothing like it. And still, uh, by this time in my life I tried to see opportunity in anything to help not only myself but other people. It's part of my healing process. So I wrote up [00:17:30] a very personal blog post on the Noisebridge blog site about my feelings and hundreds or more people responded.

Speaker 4: It was overwhelming. And, uh, it really showed me that way more people are dealing with depression than I could imagine. And, and my friend, I had no clue he was, and I'm very sensitive to it. He hit it so well and I hit it well when I was a first half of my life living with depression. But yeah, a lot of us in the geek world. And in our planet are suffering [00:18:00] with depression. So after all these responses, I thought, you know, maybe we could have a meetup where we can talk about this and openly and if we talk about this openly as a community, maybe maybe someone will reach out for help rather than harm themselves and maybe someone will live another night. And any case, these geek and depression meetups that I started are now happening in various cities around the world and hopefully more as, as we become [00:18:30] more open about this cause, you know, I think we really can benefit all of us, each of us and as a community, if everyone is able to be totally open about all of who we are and not have to be shameful or secretive about something, you know, we can be open about everything but this then, then soon we're closing off huge parts of our lives and we have this part we can't even explore ourselves cause we can't talk about it to anyone.

Speaker 4: We're not open about it with ourselves and not just about being queer or [00:19:00] whatever, but also being depressed, feeling suicidal, has a lot of shame associated with it. And a lot of people feel, unfortunately, sadly, tragically, that the easiest way out is killing themselves rather than just asking for help. And that's just so awful and unnecessary. So, uh, there are geeking depression meetups now that happened in San Francisco. I would like to see more happen elsewhere, bigger, small, whatever, and I'm [00:19:30] always available if anyone wants to contact me for any reason, project help how to start a company. Uh, if you're depressed, if you want someone to talk you into quitting a job, you don't like anything. I'm totally willing to communicate any time. Just please email me [e-mail].

Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Our Guest Today on spectrum is Mitch Altman, enter hackerspace activist. This is KALX Berkeley.

Speaker 4: [00:20:00] You had, uh, mentioned this sort of lackluster state of science, technology, engineering and math education or education in general. Do you see other possible solutions to bringing that up? Yes. This is one of the huge reasons why I started Noisebridge and why help other hackerspaces start. These are places where education happens in a very real wonderful way. Noisebridge is a 500 C3 public [00:20:30] benefit corporation in the state of California, but it's not your traditional kind of education organization. We teach and learn and share through hands on whether it's with computers, whether it's in a kitchen, a sewing machine, a soldering iron, a machine shop, whether it's exploring biology and growing mushrooms or using a laser cutter or exploring space. It's all about learning and teaching and sharing. People can try stuff if they know they love something, they can blurt more, they can [00:21:00] teach it.

Speaker 4: It's really fantastic and this is an opportunity for some people to actually learn what they want to learn to live lives that they want to live. I wish the u s education system were more of that way, but it's very unfortunate that the only schools, well most of the schools that actually provide that opportunity are very expensive. Private schools in our country and there are fortunately some exceptions. I was just teaching some kids over at them, met West School in [00:21:30] Oakland who are providing hands on learning for their kids and it's public. It's really cool that, that, that exists. But it's only, I think 165 kids are allowed there. I would love to see more of that. So hackerspaces around the world are providing these opportunities right now. It's very few opportunities compared to what we need. There's only a thousand hackerspaces in the world and we need a million and we'll get there.

Speaker 4: Uh, because hackerspaces are incredibly cool. People are [00:22:00] spontaneously creating them. There's all sorts of ways we can create these niches within which we can provide ourselves the services that our governments are not providing us. Hackerspaces just happened to be a really wonderful way near and dear to my heart and Mitch, our hackerspaces able to reach out to younger students populations that are stuck in those schools that you were talking about that aren't doing any of this hands on stuff. Yeah, well they, it's already, uh, it's already there. I mean, Noisebridge has [00:22:30] always been welcoming to people of all ages and most hackerspaces are, although some are afraid of liability issues a and they only have 18 and over, which I think is absurd. Yeah, there's, there's no age limit for learning. Not If we don't have it beaten out of us. That is, I'm not doing hackerspaces to get rid of schools.

Speaker 4: I would love schools to become places where people can actually learn, but kids can have these often totally free and it Noisebridge [00:23:00] it's always free opportunities as an alternative during lunch or before or after school, they can come to Noisebridge over weekends, uh, with or without their parents. People are always welcome to come. Hopefully as there were more and more hackerspaces, there'll be more opportunities for these kids. There are hackerspaces in the East Bay, there's ace monster toys. There's one that's just forming now called pseudo room, s u d o room, [00:23:30] and there's mothership hacker moms, which is primarily for moms who are hackers and there's also a lowel space. I can't remember what the acronym stands for, unfortunately, but therefore liberating ourselves locally. There you go. Liberating ourselves locally. There are a bunch of cool people primarily for, uh, hackers of color, of various sorts and we need more. There's actually people just now starting to talk about another hackerspace in [00:24:00] San Francisco. What I would love to see is a hackerspace in every neighborhood of San Francisco, every neighborhood of every city around the country. We need a million of these things. Okay. Well, Mitch, thanks for joining us. Yeah, it's been great being here. Thanks for having me. Awesome.

Speaker 5: Mm.

Speaker 6: A regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kaneski at Lisa kind of joined me for the calendar. The next science [00:24:30] at cal lecture will be given at 11:00 AM on August the 18th in genetics and plants biology room 100 the lecture will be given by Dr Anton Trypsin and will be titled, can one see a flower through a granite wall? Amazing capabilities of neutron imaging. The detection technology developed for NASA astrophysical missions at UC Berkeley space science lab has been successfully extended to such diverse areas as synchrotron instrumentation, biomedical imaging, ground-based astronomy [00:25:00] and neutron micro tomography. Dr Trypsin will talk about his experience with neutron imaging and how it's useful find new applications. He got his phd in Applied Physics in 1992 at the Russian Academy of Sciences and was then a British royal society fellow with University of Lye Chester and joined the space scientist lab at UC Berkeley in 1996 where he is currently a research associate

Speaker 7: on Saturday, August 18th the exploratorium at three six zero one line street at the Palace of fine arts in San Francisco [00:25:30] and celebrating founder of Frank Oppenheimer's hundredth birthday. Standard admission is $25 but college students, seniors, teachers, persons with disabilities and youths age six to 17 pay only $19 members and children five and under are free during regular museum hours of 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM visitors can take part in a variety of events and activities. Honoring Frank at the explorer bowls table from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM you can make a spinning top when [00:26:00] a Frank's favorite DIY projects throughout the day in the mine theater. You can see a series of exploratorium home movies featuring the early days of the museum as well as footage of frank engaging with visitors and staff. Today's events will also feature a frank themed presentation in the McBean theater and screenings of some of his favorite films from the museums, cinema arts archives, including the Em's classic powers of 10 there will also be birthday cake exploratory members can go [00:26:30] to a special celebration from six [inaudible] 9:00 PM for more information, visit exploratorium.edu no news with [inaudible]

Speaker 6: Karnofsky and Lisa Katovich. The Berkeley Earth surface temperature reports that the average temperature of the earth land has risen by 2.5 Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1.5 degrees over the most recent 50 years. The good match between the new temperature record and historical carbon dioxide records suggest [00:27:00] that the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions. Five Times more station records were used than in previous analyses and a new statistical approach allowed Berkeley Earth to go about a hundred years farther back in time than previous studies allowing the team to conclude that the contribution of solar activity to global warming is negligible. Five scientific papers including the raw data are available [e-mail] Elizabeth Mueller Co founder and executive director [00:27:30] of Berkeley Earth says that one of our goals at Berkeley Earth is complete transparency. We believe that everyone should be able to access raw climate data and do their own analysis. Mueller was a guest on spectrum and her interview is available on iTunes university

Speaker 7: science daily reports that UCLA researchers found that older adults who regularly used a brain fitness program played on the computer demonstrated significantly improved memory and language skills. The team studied 59 participants with an [00:28:00] average age of 84 recruited from local retirement communities in southern California. The volunteers were split into two groups. The first group you used the brain fitness program for an average of 73 and a half, 20 minute sessions across a six month period. Well a second group. You use it less than 45 times. During that same period, researchers found that the first group demonstrated significantly higher improvement in memory and language skills compared to the second group. The study's findings add to the field exploring whether such brain fitness tools may help improve language [00:28:30] in memory and may ultimately help protect individuals from the cognitive decline associated with aging and Alzheimer's disease. Age-Related memory decline affects approximately 40% of older adults and is characterized by self perception of memory loss and decline in memory performance. Previous studies have shown that engaging in mental activities can help improve memory. That little research has been done to determine whether the numerous brain fitness games or memory training programs on the market are effective. This is one of the first studies to assess the cognitive effects [00:29:00] of the computerized memory training program.

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Speaker 2: The music heard during the show is by Anna David from his album folk acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. [00:29:30] Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum.at

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