Scholarly and intellectual types have a reputation for not being grounded in the real world. The stereotype is that such persons are lily-handed types with about as many work-related calluses as a bowl of Jell-O. The reputation is undeserved; there are many counterexamples from Socrates the stonemason to Thoreau the surveyer and jack-of-all-trades to Eric Hoffer the longshoreman. For my part, I love few things better than building something. Piecing something together in a shop is pure therapy for me. But the DIY community has been written off (wrongly, in my opinion) in every arena except the home improvement craze. So when I ran across a fairly new magazine some months ago called Make, I quite literally almost wept for joy.
Make is for the guerrilla scholar of the more practical bent. Here you can find information on how to take technology and make it work for you, or even do things its creators never imagined, let alone intended. How to make a bullwhip. How to take an old PC and turn it into a homebrew DVR. Extracting DNA in your kitchen. But more than this, the magazine is about people reclaiming the right to tinker, to open stuff up and not only find out how it works, but figure out how to make it work better, warranties be damned.
“Makers” as members of this growing subculture call themselves occasionally congregate at “Maker Faires” held in different parts of the country. This past weekend saw one take place in San Mateo at the Fairgrounds. My wife and I went and, with a couple of friends, got to see these Makers up close.
