As we have come to expect, Maker Faire this past weekend was a feast for the inventive, the curious.  I think we can now say without fear of contradiction that “Makers” are not merely a sub-category of geekdom, but a full-blown movement.  This year’s theme was “Remaking America”, something I have advocated on the pages of this blog for some time.  I have thought for quite a while that the kind of inventiveness and ingenuity found among the Makers is the intellectual grist that and probably will do much to eventually lift us out of a miasma of economic, environmental, and even political backwardness that is now clearly unsustainable.

Ironically, this year I noticed that more major corporations have jumped on the Maker bandwagon, and some of the early corporate bandwagoneers have expanded their presence.  I always enjoy watching a trend take the Captains of Industry by surprise, although it is usually only a matter of time before they manage to co-opt, bottle, and sell the very anti-establishment aura that makes this all so refreshing in the first place.

My wife Denise and a young Maker-in-Training hard at work in the open Lego floor. Photo by the author.

In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to get back to the art of practical making by doing some odd handyman jobs and gardening for friends.  I’ve also begun tinkering with crystal radios (which I intend to write more about soon), of necessity experimenting on the cheap.  The tactile pleasure of coaxing sounds out of wire, one or two components and assorted bits of junk is considerable.  The pleasure is all the more enjoyable because it is personal.  It is my experiment, consisting of my efforts and my mistakes and my skill.  Gradually, I am learning how electronic gadgets work.  Very gradually.  In other words, Making for me is a highly personal thing.  Not that I don’t enjoy sharing my experiences with others and learning about what other Makers do, but for a long time our relationship with technology has been collective, even before the Internet let us all share in what William Gibson referred to as a “consensual hallucination”.

What I mean by technology as a collective experience is that most of the technology we have interfaced with in the last couple of decades has been of the “black box” variety.  You don’t mess with it, poke it, prod it, and you absolutely, positively don’t open it up.  God help you if you try to modify it.  That’s pretty much been the universal experience; the manufacturer told us what to do with something even after we theoretically “owned” it.  The same attitude has informed the sales of movies and music where companies try to dictate what you may or may not do with a piece of music you bought and paid for.

Prototyping, fabricating and even manufacturing capability for the average garage experimenter has been growing rapidly for some time.  Predictions abound that someday products will be distributed as electronic files and fabricated on 3D printers, for instance.  I can see that happening in the not-too-distant future.  The trend that making is driving is for smaller, more local solutions and innovations, and I think this is largely a good thing.  While working with your hands (and back and neck and other vulnerable body parts) has risks, the satisfaction of creating, repairing, or modifying something yourself is profound.  It grounds you somehow, gives you confidence in your ability to adjust and adapt in uncertain times.