Looking for a retro hobby with hacker cred? Try competitive lockpicking.

Schuyler Towne is a graphic designer, maker, and lockpicker. That’s him in the video up there showing off his tools. A week ago, he launched a project on Kickstarter, the micropatronage site, asking for $6,000 to begin manufacturing his own line of steel lockpicking tools. He’s already gotten over $20,000 in contributions from more than 250 backers.

Alexis Madrigal dubs Towne an “analog hacker.” What other activities might fall under this category of stripped-down hacking?

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   Analog hacking? I love it.

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    Between the ages of, let’s say, nine and 14, I frequently attempted to forge my own lockpicking tools. (There was no...

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