Today's makers are the continuation of that spirit. With the widespread availability of cheap, single board computers, like Arduino, Raspberry PI, BeagleBone, and the (coming) "$9" CHIP, computer control of your projects becomes much easier than when you needed to program a standalone PC. Add 3D printing, home CNC machines and more, and you get the new industrial revolution. The projects are impossible to pigeonhole. At one moment someone is putting colored LEDs everywhere; the next moment someone else is making CNC egg coloring robots. Maybe that's not your thing, it's mostly not mine, but we have more in common than not.
To borrow a closing from electronics trade magazine EDN:
Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. It is a grassroots subculture that is enabling engineering innovation on a global scale. By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make.
Being a "Maker" is like being a "Geek" or a "Nerd".
ReplyDeleteBoth of us met the criteria for being all three long before catchy phrases and buzzwords were used to describe us.....
The world _should_ be ours to make, but as .gov encroaches more and more, with greater restrictions and over-regulation, innovation may become more difficult to achieve or express. It may end up needing to go underground to continue to flourish.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting and exciting thing that is happening mostly underground in the U.S. Just as all the geeks playing video games for hours and hours spawned a generation of programming geeks and existed mostly underground at first. But an interesting thing happened. I started working with computers in 1964 when the military decided that's what I would do. I wanted to be a diesel mechanic but they needed technicians to fix computers. Later when I got the chance I crosstrained into computer programming. I spent my entire working life programming and fixing computers. During that time I discovered that there are motivated smart people who learn and can do great things in electronics and computer programming. AND there are poseurs who barely survive in the business and are really best suited for something else. More recently you may have seen the efforts to push more women into computer programming accompanied of course by claims of sexism and discrimination (as if the geeks somehow prevented women from spending 20 hours a day bent over a computer terminal creating things fromtheir own imagination). So my prediction is to the "makers"; watch your back. You are being targeted even now and wil be blamed and shamed for excluding women. Never mind that geeks who are interested in this kind of thing are typically so socially blind that they wouldn't even notice if you had three eyes they are perfect targets for this tactic. The game is a scam to acquire "affirmative action" (i.e. free stuff) from anyone, any group that is successful. It is the feminist version of Al Sharpton's game of claiming racism nd then demanding "free stuff".
ReplyDeleteI don't know why god made a need in men, some men, to spend many hours a day and even a lifetime of many hours a day timkering. But the same god made women (most women) desire to be mothers and mentors to their children (this is much more true than it would be for fathers) and care givers. Women, god bless them, are exceptional at these things, but for what ever reason men are exceptional at mechanical and logical things and willing to spend 20 hours a day at these tasks even when they seem hopeless. Women, generally, do not. But the feminists would have you believe that somehow this is all about discrimination.