A Great Series

This looks like a great series. Can't wait for more. Love to see rabble.ca hooking up with the Tyee (no pun intended!).

Old, new, yes, but with benefits

ME2, I agree that makers have always been. What's diff erent now is that the Web allows for the creation of niche communities and communication about the making and the made things. What we discovered, in all the maker communities we explored, was a remarkable desire to share the knowledge and the passion for making. So, that bodes well for you desire to teach about the "mindless stupidity of today's unquestioning consumerism". Thanks for reading.

Kudos!

I've been following this project from the beginning with great interest. I am so pleased to see it all come together and eagerly await more articles.

Great job to you Wayne, and your students for bringing this to life.

~Jackie

after one semester...

This is so exciting!
Go us!

The fine distinctions...

"unless it goes forward and teaches us the mindless stupidity of today's unquestioning consumerism, the effort becomes just another fad."

I think the important point is whether the claim to being a 'culture' can hold water. Some of the endeavors mentioned in the article, taken in isolation, would simply describe people being hobbyists rather than bearers of a new or distinct culture.

As long as we have had the 'stupid consumerism' going on, we have equally had an undercurrent of stalwart people who never gave in to it, but kept reusing, reducing, recycling, often in extremely ingenious ways.When I was a child, the demand for 'a new one in a box' was considered a spoilt-brat attitude, and expressive of lack of imagination. Kids were given tools of trades and materials to work with, not 'kits'. At most, we would get modular building toys such as Meccano and Lego, stuff where one's own creativity was the main ingredient. Today, when a new widget is needed, it is never a given for my family, that you have to buy one made in neither China nor Switzerland. When LED headlights first came on the market, the price was prohibitive for us, but undaunted, my kids figured how to build their own for a lot less, and learned in the process. We will always question whether we can 'just make one', before we simply go out and 'consumerize'. I work in a place where all and sundry bits of interesting materials are discarded, as they do not suit any purpose there, but arrive as packaging etc. It is almost trivial, that I will rescue some piece from a bin, and my colleagues will query 'WHAT are you going to use THAT for??' I always know, and when I tell them, they will get this faraway 'wow, but NOT for me' kind of look on their face.

...more

more

I know there are others like us. A friend of mine goes with her hubby on a grand tour of thrift shops regularly, hunting for just the kind of..., but it is characteristic that, often, the piece is not used for its original purpose, but incorporated into some unique and brand new functionality. I would certainly consider these people 'makers'. It is also characteristic for both them and us, that we generally cook from scratch, even out of the garden when we can, that we think of our needs in terms of basic elements, not from inside a set of highly developed conventions that depend on consumption of pre-made products. Like, we could spend a fortune on a four-season tent, right, but my family has been winter-camping in Manning Park in an old single-layered canvas tent with self-made embellishments involving encased fiberglass-layers and reflection blankets, as well as of course utilizing the available snow. We were SNUG, quite aside from gaining the satisfaction of engineering our own comfort. When our children were little, we took them camping each summer, where the rule was no batteries, no propane tanks, no ice chest. They had a grand time and learned lots, but coming back to school, they were jeered at over the perpetual lack of the obligatory trip to Disneyland, after everybody wrote their piece of 'my summer vacation'. Yes, schools are highly complicit in pushing 'dumb consumerism'!

I could not think to live in any other way. If that makes me a bearer of a subculture, so be it, but I really think of the whole consumerism flip as the deviant thing, and the resourcefulness of old as the normal way.

For instance, I am upset that people in Haiti helping themselves to food from supermarkets in the present chaotic and desperate situation, that this is called 'looting' by our media. I think that this comes out of a tunnel-visioned complete lack of ability to understand their situation. To me, looting is grabbing big in order to make oneself wealthy at the expense of others, a criminal act. I don't think people who refuse to see their children starve, while food rots behind a glass wall right next to them, are criminals. But I believe the 'looting' terminology arises out of thinking like a virtous little consumer, 'one must pay for the goods'(pay to whom?) CONTEXT, people! They're just trying to survive. My point is, I don't think a MAKER would have trouble seeing the difference.

agreed, nothing new, but...

Sometime in the last few decades, humans, especially North American humans, lost their way, or rather, were turned into consumers by a system that increasingly sought new sources of cheap labour, leaving us nothing left to make!

I'm old enough to identify with the points Dorothy and ME2 make. There was a time in my young life where there was a clear distinction between a want and a need. Often, the toys we got combined the two, challenging us to manufacture, build and create things. The big toys I got as a kid included a chemistry set, a tool box, model airplanes, puzzles and that sort of thing. These were great because it afforded me the opportunity to use take the needs and create wants - if that makes any sense.

I watch the toddlers nowadays, and they get showered with pure consumer crap, the novelty of which lasts a few minutes, then it gets tossed into the closet. I think this consumerist mindset we've developed has made it so that the thrill is in purely the wanting, the buying, the shopping, not the needing, creating or making.

My reaction to this so-called makers movement: I'm encouraged that youth are using the Internet to do more than watch porn or play video games. Is it a statistically significant trend? Damn, I sure hope so, but I doubt it. I fear that it's too little too late in the grand scheme of things. The real makers movement needs to be in our manufacturing sectors (a return to making consumer things, not just consuming them on a mass scale) and in our schools. The Web is being constantly touted as the miracle elixir of our current troubled times, and I can't help but wonder if this makers movement via online social life is just another false promise. But I do admire the signs of hope. I also fear that if it does grow into the success story, corporations will find a way to package it, market it, and sell it like just another late night infomercial.

Signs of Hope

Thanks Barney and dorothy. I do see "signs of hope", Barney. Social media is connecting previously isolated niches of makers. Now, Dorothy, your homemade all-weather tent can become a guide on http://www.instructables.com/ (and I hope it does).

Stories of inventiveness and resourcefulness have legs and carry powerful lessons. Those are hopeful lessons, hopeful signs.

I think, underneath the silly surface of facebook apps and banal status updates, there is a group of wired folks interested in DIY, local and self-sufficiency. This discussion helps spread the word that they exist. Loving it.

nostalgia?

While reading the "Makers" article it was hard to avoid recalling Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media”.

“The electric media are the telegraph, radio, films, telephone, computer and television, all of which have not only extended a single sense or function as the old mechanical media did — i.e., the wheel as an extension of the foot, clothing as an extension of the skin, the phonetic alphabet as an extension of the eye — but have enhanced and externalized our entire central nervous systems, thus transforming all aspects of our social and psychic existence. The use of the electronic media constitutes a break boundary between fragmented Gutenberg man and integral man, just as phonetic literacy was a break boundary between oral-tribal man and visual man.”

http://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall-mcluhan/

Today’s techno-revolution takes us beyond McLuhan. It takes us beyond phonetic literacy into the literacy provided by instant communication. “[T]he tightly structured “linear” modes of traditional thought and discourse are obsolescent in the new “’postliterate’” age of the electric media.”.

It’s 2010 but it seems we’re just stepping out of the 1960s.

I'm Thrilled With This Series of Makers

I thoroughly enjoyed this and I'll be both following it in The Northstar Journal http://nstar312.blogspot.com/ and recommending it to my readers. This is topnotch journalism and I am also proud that it is the work of two countrymen. Raising the Maple Leaf cup. Nice going, guys, and finest kind. Rusty

Thanks Rusty

Glad you're hooked Rusty. We'll try not to disappoint you.

DIY currencies

I followed some links here to an article about DIY currencies. I was in Cameroon in October 2006 and on every street corner in every town people were selling mobile phone time transfered from their account to yours via a phone call. I was able to buy my lunch at a small restaurant with the phone time I had left on my local SIM card. Another type of LETS with some potential, although dependent on technologies that aren't exactly self-reliant.

the larger picture

Two important things our consumer society can do to be more gentle with our poor, beleaguered planet are to simply consume much less, and to live less complex material lives that are more in tune with the environment.

The thing is, our current lifestyle habits and choices are part of a much larger picture. Start by asking yourself some questions about your lifestyle choices - bearing in mind what it’s made of, how it’s made, where it’s made, who makes it, is it planet friendly, etc. For example, for those who can afford these things - do you really need that latest electronic gadget? Do you really need to buy that latte, especially in that disposable cup? Do you really need to eat strawberries or tomatoes in the middle of winter, or use that dishwasher, or have that manicured lawn, or leave that computer on 24/7, or drive hundreds of kms to go skiing?

As these questions show, there are many “lifestyle” habits and choices we can and should be more conscientious about. The unfortunate repercussion is that even a small fraction of folks changing or reducing their habits and choices means the fabric of other peoples’ lives unwinds. We operate within a global economic structure and a global society, and until we take responsibility for and address the concerns of those who are or will be vulnerable, whether we continue on the same social or economic path or change directions and assert “self in the face of globalization, commercialization and centralization,” we may not achieve much to be proud of.

While I admire anyone’s efforts to be more gentle with this planet, for many the “change and form human (of) human existence” may only come about through some environmental or social event that forces or necessitates change. The emerging “maker” society sounds interesting, and I look forward to more information. I just hope “makers” put much conscious thought into what is being made or done so that their endeavours don’t end up being equal to or even more frivolous or detrimental than those of current structures.

onthebay - good points

I think I share your thoughts on this.

You can't make cosmetic changes to capitalism and expect radical change. But then, maybe I've makers aren't expecting radical change. I suspect this is not a homogeneous lot. In any case, you need to get at the roots to really make fundamental changes to the way we consume. In the 1960's hippies thought they were quite revolutionary in making their own things, sharing cookie recipes, living on communes, but it was just escapism - a lifestyle which eventually got co-opted by corporations and advertising moguls and resold back to us as something progressive and hip.

Does this new maker movement overlook the real root, structural, systemic problems of consumer capitalism? Are they doing little more than their own version of tune in, opt out? I do agree the medium of communication is unique, but is this enough to produce the kind of desired change more optimistic proponents speak of? I am hopeful but doubtful. I am definitely a maker, and I routinely use sites like Craigslist to buy, sell and give away stuff; I use other sites to learn how to cook a recipe or how to fix an appliance or what have you... but I see nothing new in this behavoir. Capitalism and global destruction of the environment march on.

Open Source as the Bellwether

Barney, I look to the open source software movement as the bellwether of what Maker Culture could engender. It's already being successfully translated into the creation of 3D real world goods by folks who use 3D printers to create complex objects - and share the designs for those objects on sites like http://thingiverse.com. And, the first things folks who build a 3D printer called the RepRap are encouraged to do is to use it to print out parts so their friends can make another one. Will these ideas scale? That's a question we address in the last part of this series.

Excellent!

Ancient Indigenous people's knowledge, quashed for milennia by the corporation/oligarchs, is now supported by new quantum physics (particle and wave action of photons and neutrons). The experiments prove that DNA from a person (saliva sample) responds to that person's emotions instantly (measured at a 350 mile distance in the actual experiment). Maker culture sounds like the perfect place for integration and application of this new knowledge into our daily lives. I especially like the "being a maker in a world where we will be able to bypass the corporation, circumvent laws and prolong life".

Sentient Spit

Thanks Miss aware-beware. Not sure I want spit with commpassion, but I welcome the kind words.

What about me?

I invented the pulser pump. (100 000 views on youtube) AND it is in all about pumps too.
Thats more than Mcguyver ever did by the way.
I invented the dripper trackers for solar.
(They actually made the tracking catagory on solarcooking.org to put them in)
And I did the solar design t-square and clam shaped solar cookers too. And the mechanical mathematician for making parabolic dishes without any math.
AND I am a member of babble.
Seriously though, there needs to be more collaboration between the scientific makers.
Scientists submit proposals to funding committees and the funding committees decide which proposals go ahead. Thats the weakness of science right there. The funding committees decide the entire direction of science. Nothing in appropriate technology ever gets funded.
Brian

Brian, I note the cone shaped solar cooker

used by Clooney in the movie "Men Who Stare at Goats" was a flop! And yes, nothing gets past the funding and grant framework that the powers that be have etched into our society. Maker culture here I come!

Radical change and making

If making is indeed a reuse movement, and if it indeed is one that explains "how-to" well enough to make DIY attractive, fun, practical and doable, it will take off and cause cultural change. If it remains "mad-max"-styled and punky, many won't be attracted to it, regardless of marketers' attempts to co-opt it.

Speaking of co-optation, when did the marketing of hippie culture as hip ever make home cooking and off-the-grid communal living less revolutionary? You can't fault marketers for noticing a social phenomenon, and the dirty fingers of capitalism can spin all the gold by association that they like out of a revolutionary trend without tainting the core idea and practice. Anyone with even a little ability for critical thought can figure that out. It doesn't matter if chem sets and knitting needles are sold more because of the trend being noticed. DIY is still revolutionary. Now if we only DIY with extra-toxic substances in 3D printers, it may be less revolutionary. More things need to be repairable. Things might become more expensive as a result of departure from the high commercial churn of planned obsolescence, but repair ethics keep $ local so there is a gain to be had.