Maker Revolution

Graph at https://miro.medium.com/max/875/1*[email protected]

Description

Indy Johar:

“Driven by rapidly shifting technological capabilities and the DIY aspirations of the YouTube generation, we see 3D printing and wiki- or micro-production of furniture, homes, and even guns, evolving rapidly. Some have heralded this disruptive transformation as the next industrial revolution. For if the 20th century advanced the democratisation of consumption, they argue, the 21st century should focus on a new democracy of production.

Where the industrialist of the 19th century dreamed of mass production, mass consumption and market efficiency, the maker renaissance we are living in is a rebellion against this mode of production. In the same way YouTube democratised the media, so too does the maker revolution enable and empower people to create, this time through a more playful, experimental set of purposeful activities that transcend traditional notions of ‘consumption’ or ‘production’.

This is a future that has the capacity to lead to a world where customisation and artisanal craft are the default, not the pricey added extra. Where products are not just one of thousands but are thousands of one-offs. Where innovation is open and versionable, driven by the tinkerers, iterators and context not the centralised corporate lab.

This new ‘craft economics’ puts higher value on outcomes and contextual relevance, iteration, and particularization than on mass output and mock differentiation, and is one where localised production renders obsolete the opaque supply chains that cause such environmental and social damage across the world. From perpetual product homogenisation and optimisation driven by corporate markets, we may be seeing the reemergence of a more variegated, context-driven landscape of making, remaking, hack and re-use. However, the current renaissance of the maker goes beyond shifting consumer and market behaviors and signifies the possibility of an even more systemic revolution; one which is both small but globally connected, micro yet massive.

Organisations such as Wiki House, Opendesk, Arduino RepRap and Open Source Ecology are using radically new methods, practices and organisational forms to develop a new generation of sustainable and innovative processes, products and services, sharing a commitment to open-source principles, democratic participation and transparency while fostering cooperation and collaboration at a scale, scope and speed previously unimaginable. This marks a growing transition from the closed company and cluster logic towards shared and democratised innovation across an open network of companies and hubs. But perhaps more significantly this is transition towards a democracy of making, innovation and production — and set the capacity for a new model of inclusive growth, one not based on redistribution but massive contribution.

While these high-profile cases and thereby theoretical possibilities often attract the headlines, the real challenge is reimagining our institutional architecture to match the dream offered by emerging technologies. Just as the Victorians imagined new institutions such as what is now the British Standards Institution and renaissance Italy imagined the concept of IP and patents, we need to make sure that the rules of the game match the possibility of the moment.”

(https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/democratic-making-c5ada37db594)