There used to be a place in the Bay Area called &quot;a clean well lighted place for books&quot; which was a book store (of course) but it was also a pretty decent place to hang out. Of course talking and reading were fun (sort of a library without the librarian shhing you all the time) but I always wanted to create &quot;A clean well lighted place to hack.&quot; which was more tech oriented.<p>Of course you would need something to hack on and I figured a wall of various embedded systems connected together in various ways so that you would have write code on the outer ones to talk to the inner ones etc.<p>What we got though were maker spaces, which when they work have a pretty cool vibe but sometimes it&#x27;s like hanging out with a bunch of ghosts or something. All going about their business, not joining in or starting conversations etc. That was why I thought an ice breaker type activity like the wall of systems would be an interesting idea. Sort of like putting a puzzle out on the table at a dinner party. A safe reason to be hanging out.<p>Some day I keep thinking I&#x27;ll build something like that.