Image by Andrewrabbott -
Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43664330
So this post is a
response to Adrians post .... short version.. we mostly agree!
As ever feel free to
ignore.. although I get involved in maker stuff I don't spend much
time thinking about the form it takes so others are much better
informed than me and indeed my definitions may be well off the mark.
However here is my two penneth worth!..
For me I prefer the
term maker culture or maker scene as I feel there is a broad culture
of people globally linked by making within which I feel there are
movements. For me a movement is when a collection of bits come
together to create a unified direction towards a common goal...like
when 'movement' is used to describe the bits in a clock all working
together to make the hands reflect the concept of time. So I think
there are lots of movements within maker culture.. but not all makers
would align with all movements. So for example;
I see a lot of
movement around restart and repair, from the magnificent restart party through to Make's appropriation of the phrase “if you can't open it you don't own it”. This unifies a lot of makers, from
circuit bending re-users, to people designing and making ethically
sourced repairable embedded systems, to those coming up with ways to
reuse plastic bottles.
I see movement
around localised production/manufacturing with global design, the
fablab idea etc. This movement has a lot going on in it but those makers
immersed in areas with lots of manufacturing opportunities might not
align with it as a movement as they don't see a need. For example I doubt I'd
have thought about PCB fab houses and the ethics and complexity of making at home
versus using a UK fab house or euro manufacturer or a far eastern company... if I was a maker based in Shenzen...whereas as a maker halfway up a mountain in rural North Wales I do!
Citizen science,
lots of makers I know are involved in citizen science projects and
this could be considered a movement within the maker scene, as could many other areas, crypto
currency, OSS/FLOSS, renewables, energy monitoring, opendata ...I
could go on and on..
However some people
are makers purely out of an autodidactic playful trait, in that they tinker with
arduinos/launchpads/espxxxx/picaxe/fpga or PCR/geneslicing or
CNC/lasers/routers/3dprint or diyspace/satellites/radio/rockets or
hand whittle a bowl/spoon just because they want to learn and play with no
particular end goal or aim... and this is where making seems more
flaneurial than a movement to me.
So why does this
subject catch my attention, well the difficulty for me considering
the whole of maker culture a movement, is that I feel it could
alienate people.. I know plenty of makers who just make. I was
chatting the other day with a person who was telling me about their
model trains and how they had created a massive logic gate control
system for it.... for their own pleasure.. I certainly class this
person as an archetypal maker... but part of a movement?... I'm not
sure. If movement and common aim becomes the core of maker culture..
do we not kill off its aimless wandering vagabond spirit of freedom?
Thanks for
listening. :)
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