The Homebrew computer club was pretty much the kind of community that Eliezer describes, it had a big effect on the development of digital systems. Same probably true for the model railroad club at MIT (where the PDP architecture was created) but I know less about that. The MIT AI lab was also important that way, and welcomed random people from outside (including kids). So this pattern has been important in tech development for at least 60 years.
There are lots of get togethers around common interests—see e.g. Perlmonger groups in various cities. See the list of meetups in your city.
Recently “grass roots organizing” has taken on this character but it is explicitly partisan (though not strongly ideological). The main example I know of is Democrats for America, which came from the Dean campaign in 2004 but outlasted it. It is controlled by the members, not by any party apparatus, and hosts weekly community flavored pizza meetups.
There are also more movable communities like music festivals, the national deadhead network that attended concerts (no longer so active), Burning Man, etc. These tend to be very strong support communities for their members while they are in session (providing medical, social, and dispute resolution services, etc.) but are otherwise only latent.
The Homebrew computer club was pretty much the kind of community that Eliezer describes, it had a big effect on the development of digital systems. Same probably true for the model railroad club at MIT (where the PDP architecture was created) but I know less about that. The MIT AI lab was also important that way, and welcomed random people from outside (including kids). So this pattern has been important in tech development for at least 60 years.
There are lots of get togethers around common interests—see e.g. Perlmonger groups in various cities. See the list of meetups in your city.
Recently “grass roots organizing” has taken on this character but it is explicitly partisan (though not strongly ideological). The main example I know of is Democrats for America, which came from the Dean campaign in 2004 but outlasted it. It is controlled by the members, not by any party apparatus, and hosts weekly community flavored pizza meetups.
There are also more movable communities like music festivals, the national deadhead network that attended concerts (no longer so active), Burning Man, etc. These tend to be very strong support communities for their members while they are in session (providing medical, social, and dispute resolution services, etc.) but are otherwise only latent.