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Democratizing the Maker Movement 130

Posted by samzenpus from the leveling-the-playing-field dept.
aarondubrow writes: To its advocates and participants, the Maker Movement resonates with those characteristics that we believe makes America great: independence and ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness. But as impressive as today's tools are, they're not accessible to many Americans simply because of their cost and high technological barrier to entry. An article in the Huffington Post describes efforts supported by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies to create new tools, technologies and approaches to make the Maker movement more inclusive and democratic.
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Democratizing the Maker Movement More

Democratizing the Maker Movement

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  • Why not use the system (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:09PM (#50488347)
    Just because we've renamed DIY to maker we have to re-engineer its socioeconomic parameters? I am so wanting to yell get off my lawn right now. millennials need a good swift kick in the face.

    • David J. Gingery (Score:4, Informative)

      by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:28PM (#50488539)
      built an entire machine shop using only a 3/8" drill. He has a complete set of books how he did this. There are a number of youtube videos of people who've duplicated this work. He goes through the process of building a lathe which is used to build each additional tool (kinda like how it happened through history.

      It would be well to realize that most tools and accessories are merely commercial versions of devices that were originally made by hand with limited equipment.

      -- Gingery, David J (2012-05-14). The Metal Shaper (Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap) (Kindle Locations 146-147). David J. Gingery Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.

      I haven't built anything yet, but have read the books and they are very interesting. Completely agree with DIY being renamed. I used to build things with my dad all the time growing up and particularly remember building a shopvac out of a 5gallon paint can.

      • Completely agree with DIY being renamed.

        Before GenX, DIY'ers were called, "machinists" or "tool and die makers".

        Every generation has to put its pitiful stamp on things so they can imagine they did something special.

        • I think every generation puts its stamp on things so that they can feel connected to them as something from their era instead of being "those things that my father and grandfather did".
          • As I get older, I'm more amazed at the things my grandfather did, especially considering the limitations they had 70 years ago.

            • As I get older, I'm more amazed at the things my grandfather did, especially considering the limitations they had 70 years ago.

              No kidding. I still have furniture my grandfather built by hand, some of it during the Depression, and it's as solid and sturdy as the day he made it. I see people buying stuff from IKEA and wonder what happened.

              The only thing is, when I have to move, grandad's furniture is some of the heaviest stuff I own.

              • I see people buying stuff from IKEA and wonder what happened.

                Have you seen the price of wood recently? I build myself some furniture, specifically a standing height workbench since it's hard to buy them. The wood cost a pretty penny.

                It's vastly cheaper to buy it from Ikea than it is to build it yourself, and that's not een getting into the price of tools, somewhere to keep all the stuff and do work and etc etc.

                Plus, most people's grandfather's couldn't build furniture. One of mine was a doctor, the other a

        • I never heard of the term diy (in context of anything other than home remodel) before the maker movement. And I've known a couple of few who've built their own cars, engines, airplanes and boats. I guess it's because I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood where nobody called it anything, it was just something you did for fun in your garage on the weekends.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by TWX ( 665546 )
            I've always called it, "going out into the workshop". My dad had a workshop. My mother's father had a workshop at home and was a machinist responsible for the manufacturing equipment at a Whirlpool appliance factory. My father's father had a farm and had to take care of the equipment.

            The very term maker is pretentious in the extreme when it's self-applied, given that the bulk of the people who call themselves this probably wouldn't even qualify as apprentices in the trades model, as far as their knowl

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by khallow ( 566160 )

              There's nothing spectacular or special about it, just a guy with a bunch of tools and supplies doing something.

              It's just a celebration of the core of civilization.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by TWX ( 665546 )
                When does celebration end and circle-jerk begin?

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by khallow ( 566160 )
                  When the observer decides it does. So you've decided. But in their defense, this sort of circle-jerking has been going on long before the current trend, such as the jury-rig that costs more than a proper repair would.

    • Exactly! I read an article about the "Maker Movement" and it sounded like it had something to do with robotics, so I wondered why the odd name? Then I ran into a woman who was mighty proud of being involved with the "Maker Movement" and a little prodding brought to light that all it was about was making things, mostly not high tech. I had to bite my tongue when she mentioned something about kids making bird-feeders! And she was talking about teenagers! I can remember making a bird-feeder out of bits of

    • These threads make me sad.

      So you have a bunch of people who are getting up off their arses and actually learning stuff and making stuff and it gets filled with smug, selfsatisfied douchebags wanting to make themselves sound better by pissing all over it.

      I wonder: have you bothered to shave your neck recently? Because I read your post in the voice of the comic book guy from the Simpsons.

  • huffing and puffing. every activity has some barrier or barriers to entry. some barriers actually are good things.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      Well muffington boast is a leftist feminist rag, so it's going to weave the oppression olympics narrative into everything. They're right up there with bill oreilly in bullshit factor.

  • All technologies are specialized at first and then (Score:4, Informative)

    by GLMDesigns ( 2044134 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:12PM (#50488379)
    All technologies are specialized at first and then spread out - whether it's printing or optical lenses or steam engines or whatever. It's good to speed up the process but the DIY maker movement has decentralized and come down in price remarkably fast. The technological barrier is one of knowledge - something that _mainly_ (not only) requires desire to learn.
  • ... at what point did the expression "begs the question" come to mean the same thing as "raises the question", and no longer mean that the proposition being claimed is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fisted ( 2295862 )

      That happened a few years ago. Of course, this begs the question "why?".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        It invites the question, prompts it, provokes it even... it does not beg it.

        But the question is nonetheless valid... why?

    • The Wiki article [wikipedia.org] does not currently cite an earliest known usage.

    • Circular reasoning is when the proposition being claimed is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise. Begging the question occurs when a conclusion is made on an assumption.

      Begging the question happens when you claim Y because X, while assuming X. This can often be a false premise, for example, that the ground is wet, thus it rained recently--we know rain makes the ground wet; but can't other things make the ground wet?

      Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning; but we usually only c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      Around the time people stopped mooting a proposal and started mooting points.

    • Decades ago. Many many decades ago.

      The problem is people keep clinging to an archaic definition which is really only applicable in very specific contexts, and ignoring that an entirely separate expression has also sprung up around it.

      So in the context of logic and debate someone can still be "begging the question".

      Likewise, if you say "We discovered this weekend Jane is allergic to eating poop". That pretty much begs ("for someone to ask") the question of "what the hell was Jane doing eating poop?"

      Trust m

      • So, using entirely new words:

        decluttering half-ass fap fap fap forensics gunna photobomb retweeting scenarioist twerking shizzle

        Ta da ... English is whatever popular usage tells us it is.

        Which begs the question ... how did we ever survive before "twerking" and "shizzle" were actually words?

  • What does that mean? Making these tools affordable and accessible to muggles is not a bad idea. I'm not sure what is "democratic" about that.

    • >> What does that mean?

      Somebody at the federal level is about to take your money (paid as taxes) and spend it on a program that will probably dole out grants to organizations that say they're working on maker spaces and need tools.

      >> Making X affordable and accessible to Y is not a bad idea. ...and that's how we got the national debt.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fatboy ( 6851 )

        Making something affordable and accessible does not require a government program. The people that think it requires a government program are the problem that got us the national dept.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MattGWU ( 86623 )

      Democratic, adj (Sense 2): pertaining to or characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all http://dictionary.reference.co... [reference.com]

      Providing equal access to all to these tools would be a process of 'democratization'. It's just what the term means.

      • I've bought almost all of these tools off of craigslist and own everything but a surface grinder. Thy are pretty cheap and I've only spent a few thousand dollars for everything, so they can't be that high in demand. Grizzly sells the tools also for about the same price as CL if you want something new and don't mind Taiwan or China. This is the same as it has been for the last 10 years. What is new now?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )
          What's new now is that people that haven't chosen to commit their dollars to doing something are upset that they don't have access to that something.

          Some choose to buy high end electronics all of the time. Some choose to buy expensive new cars. Some choose to eat-out constantly. Some choose to buy expensive houses. Etc, etc, etc.

          Some even chose poorly when they could have done better for themselves in the past, and some didn't get much of a choice and are stuck with detrimental starting experience

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fatboy ( 6851 )

        Sounds more like the want of equal outcomes, not equal opportunity to me.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:20PM (#50488461)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The first thing you can do is stop using the cringe inducing term "maker" and trying to make it into a way of life instead of something you just do.

      How about words like "Democratize"?

      The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary bourgeois, equality.

      The term "value" in macroeconomics suffers from this as well (it's used simultaneously with multiple, non-equivalent definitions, and thus most textbook economics and great economic papers--Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" comes to mind--are an exercise in bullshit via the fallacy of equivocation). The term "wealth" was easier to salvage; but I had to fall back on "buying power", "production", and so forth in the end, and intentionally define "wealth" as a meaningle

    • Re:Okay (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dr. Bombay ( 126603 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:48PM (#50489311) Homepage

      The term "maker" used to cause me to cringe as well, until I saw a plaque on a Pratt & Whitney gun boring lathe from the 1860's at the Harper's Ferry museum.
      The plaque read,
              Pratt & Whitney
                  Makers
          Hartford, Connecticut

      If one of the earliest precision machinery manufactures thought of themselves as makers, maybe the term is not so bad after all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TWX ( 665546 )
        If these new "makers" could work with the materials that could build a cannon or other arms, or could even do a decent job working with metal, I might agree. These makers are the equivalent of the "mee too"ers of Usenet in the early days of the Commercial Internet.

    • Maker spaces accept paypal.

  • when the old words were perfectly suitable? Is it because every new generation has to feel it's special and somehow better than the previous generation?

  • support maker spaces (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gnaythan1 ( 214245 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:34PM (#50488589)

    The Maker movement is awesome. and is a lot like shop class from back in the day, but with a lot more access to tools and retention of fingers. It needs some sort of small grant or funding initiative to get these things off the ground.

    I just joined one still getting off the ground in the Everett-Lynnwood area (North of Seattle). Lots of potential, suffering from lack of funding. We get funds, we get tools. We get tools, we get more members.We get more members, we get more funds.

    But just starting out... that lack of funds is a killer. We have multiple 3d printers, a laser cutter, and an electronics parts bin the size of a walk in closet, but its hard to find a big enough place to PUT it all, who won't mind us using a laser cutter on pleather or 3d printing vinyl, or using some louder equipment to cut and drill some t- slots

    Its happening... but slower than any of us really want. and none of the places we have looked at for a permanent home are really big enough yet.

    • It would be well to realize that most tools and accessories are merely commercial versions of devices that were originally made by hand with limited equipment.

      -- Gingery, David J

    • Good luck with your makerspace/hackspace venture.

      It's early days, but you will certainly suffer growing pains. I suggest you get started with access control mechanism and training early, otherwise you'll wind up having to do it in a hurry when you notice expensive, delicate tools start getting broken by inexperienced users.

      • Way ahead of you there. Three stages so far. to be better defined later.

        Stage one is drop in, bring your own laptop and we will tweak and try to print what you are trying to make. Stay over there please.

        Stage two is you get trained in the tool, you get to touch it. Name not on the list... no touchy! You also get to help stage ones. Some tools require a lot more training than others. Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

        Stage three is "here's your key, you signed off on everything." You have to hel

        • Interesting, that sounds pretty thorough.

          In the London Hackspace, we've got card access control (via some hackspace-made system) for some of the machines, though it's being rolled out to many things. People are split into maintainer/user, where any user can use the machine and mark it as broken, at which point it can only be re-enabled by a maintainer. Maintainers can also add new users to the auth list.

          Initially, it was only present on a 3-in-1 mill and lathe machine. It got rolled out to a laser cutter an

  • Be Left Behind (BLB).

    Seriously of all the social inequality in the world, this one ranks way down on what it will take to provide equality to people.

    I work next to DC in Crystal City and it has a TechShop. Membership seems expensive, and you can see though the windows there are not many members. When you do see people inside you never really see feverish activity inventing the next Roomba or Segway. This whole Maker movement seems to have become a scam. Great for early enthusiasts who created their own

    • Yes, that's what it is. You don't need a club (though I think it would help if you wanted to learn). If you have the space, buying the required tools to build 99% of everything (including larger tools) is only going to cost a few thousand dollars. And for the parts that you can't make, just take it to a local machine shop or email your cad drawing to an online machine shop (with 3d printer or cnc sheet metal bender). For small prototype products it's more cost effective.

      • Re:Inventing New Ways to BLB (Score:4, Insightful)

        by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M ( 4212163 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:04PM (#50489477)

        If you have the space, buying the required tools to build 99% of everything (including larger tools) is only going to cost a few thousand dollars.

        That's the two main problems right there. A lot of people can't afford "a few thousand dollars" to buy tools. And a lot of people living in towns and cities live in apartments: they don't have the space and they can't run most tools because of the noise and dust generated by them.

        • This guy (one of my inspirations) started and ran a machine shop in a NYC apartment (later expanding to house a few years later, then out of NY). His channel NYCNC [youtube.com].

          Other than a $6 tracfone for emergencies, I don't have a cell phone. That's a few hundred dollar savings per year right there (I don't make somewhat below minimum wage and have to carefully budget) and you don't need to buy all the machines at once. Most people who are into this sort of thing collect them over a lifetime.

      • Ah so all you need is a few thousand dollars for the tools (not actually, but we'll get to that) and a quite a few hnudred thousand dollars for somewhere to put them oh and a few more thousands (or tens thereof) to get a bunch of parts custom made.

        You know or you can group together with a bunch of likeminded folks and band together and start up a club for much, much less.

        Getting back to what I said, my local hackspace has far more than a few thousand dollars worth of tools. The big A0 sized laser cutter run

  • Government involvement FTW! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:49PM (#50488747) Homepage Journal

    The maker movement desperately needs federal government support.

    That's the only way women and minorities will get access to makerspaces and creative tools.

    Why, women make up half of all people, and the fact that they're under-represented in hackerspace memberships is clear evidence of pervasive prejudice and the "rape culture".

    Just as there are few women coders, there are also few women hackers.

    We only need to consider scientific research to see how this would work: before federal involvement, scientific inquiry was haphazard, capricious, and discretionary. Nowadays we have an organized inquiry into the frontiers of science at every direction of inquiry - eliminating duplication of effort, guiding lines of inquiry for best results, and generally eliminating risk.

    This same model could bring the maker movement into the 21st century, bestowing the benefits of government bureaucracy on hackers across the country!

  • Turning non problems into social crises (Score:3)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @02:57PM (#50488815)

    Sixty dollar do it yourself printer
    http://www.instructables.com/i... [instructables.com]

    Free open source software to make it work
    http://3dprintingforbeginners.... [3dprinting...inners.com]

    How much more democratic does it have to be ?

    • Well, someone has to pay you to do it for starters. You don't expect everyone to do that much work for free, do you? Making things, while not terribly difficult, does involve a lot of work.

  • Really - if I wanted something Democratic I would buy something off of the shelf, because people voted with their dollars to make that product happen.

    When I want to be a dictator over what I use I build it myself, to my own dictate.

    The Maker Movement is about Dictatorship! Not Democracy!

    That being said - I'm not a big fan of 3D printers. I see their appeal and all, but I'm more of a fan of taking a hacksaw, hammer, Dremmel and epoxy to whatever I have access to when I want to custom build something. Seri

  • And putting the means of production in the hands of the people is evil. It interferes with interstate commerce [justia.com].

  • you lost me at Huffington Post (Score:4, Informative)

    by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:41PM (#50489229)
    I can summarize the majority of all Huffington Post articles in just a few comments:

    - It's the white person's fault

    - Men in tech hate women and keep them out in a variety of ways

    - Men in general are evil unless they are gay or black and get shot by a white cop

    - Anything a white person has ever succeeded at is largely due to their privilege

    - Black people are held back by every force conceived by University Professors who study these things

    - Christian's are horrible yet Muslims are just mischaracterized

    - If you don't want unlimited immigration then you must be xenophobic and racist

    I probably missed a few but that's the gist of it.

  • You can make a custom handgrip for your tool without a 3D printer, just grabbing one of several available self-hardening blobs of goop wrapped around a tool. Some would require using greased rubber glove while squeezing to make grip.

    You want to be a real maker, get some metal, drill set, file set, a couple micrometers and scales, and start sculpting metal. Graduate to a lathe and mill (non-CNC, plenty of tricks of trade to make curves and such. Or if prefer wooden things, you know what to do.

    But in most

    • OOh so in your world, you can only be a real maker or a true scotsman if you work with metal or wood.

      And why is that exactly? Is there another reason other than wanting to feel superior?

      But in most cases you don't need a 3D printer that oozes soft plastic crap.

      Most 3D printers will happily print ABS, which is one of the most commonly used plastics.

      • OOh so in your world, you can only be a real maker or a true scotsman if you work with metal or wood.

        And why is that exactly? Is there another reason other than wanting to feel superior?

        But in most cases you don't need a 3D printer that oozes soft plastic crap.

        Most 3D printers will happily print ABS, which is one of the most commonly used plastics.

        You can only be a "true maker" if you have the capability of working with a variety of materials to suit the needs of the part, just like you can only be a "true maker" if you have some ability to work with electronics, plumbing/hydraulics, and mechanics, and if you can make parts using a variety of different fabrication methods depending on what suits the conditions. Choosing appropriate materials is a critical part of making something. "Soft plastic crap" presumably refers to PVA, which is mechanically

        • Your criteria sound completely arbitrary.

          You didn't even include welding in your list. You didn't include programming either---how are you going to use your freshly soldered mucrocontroller if you can't program? And you have hydraulics (something I've never dabbled in), but ecluded casting (something I have dabbled in). Why? You also omitted working with wood which seems like a HUGE gap to me.

          It is entirely possible to make an interesting variety of different things without knowing every single skill ever d

      • You want to be a real maker, get some metal, drill set, file set, a couple micrometers and scales, and start sculpting metal.

        OOh so in your world, you can only be a real maker or a true scotsman if you work with metal or wood.

        Where the did he say that? He said you can be a real maker by doing $FOO; He never said that *only* by doing $FOO can you be a real maker.

        Talk about strawmen...

        And why is that exactly? Is there another reason other than wanting to feel superior?

        Nah... mostly people who want to feel superior construct strawmen so they can display how good they are at "winning" .... Oh, wait....

        • Do you know what a straw man is?

          Hi literally said "You want to be a real maker ... start sculpting metal".

          That is pretty much the archetypal "no true scotsman". You can be a perfectly real maker without indulging in heavy metal work.

          • Do you know what a straw man is?

            Hi literally said "You want to be a real maker ... start sculpting metal".

            Yes - but he never said that that's the only path. He never even implied it. You saythat he said "the only way to be a real maker is by..." when all he really said was "You can be a real maker by..."

            That is pretty much the archetypal "no true scotsman". You can be a perfectly real maker without indulging in heavy metal work.

            I don't understand why you are presenting that argument as if it refutes what OP said. It doesn't. You're arguing that he said $FOO when he clearly didn't, and then you present an argument for why $FOO[1] is wrong. You win your argument only by virtue of the fact that $FOO is indeed wrong, but he never said nor

      • No, to be a true scottsman you have to drink cask proof scotch whiskey and eat haggis

        ABS is fine for some applications, but molding is superior to printed work for several reasons. Funny car recalls have been done because of using ABS under the hood when metal should have been used (to have parts of ABS components replaced by guess what), it doesn't do well after prolonged heat exposure

        • No, to be a true scottsman you have to drink cask proof scotch whiskey and eat haggis

          I believe not. One doesn't generally drink it at 60%. You pour in a little water (preferable Scottish spring water) and drink it at around 40%, what most of the stuff is bottled at. And haggis is delicious.

          But to be a True scotsman you need to drink Wkd and eat deep fried mars bar.

          Anyway, automotive stuff is incredibly demanding. Just because some under hood parts couldn't stand up to the heat doesn't mean all plastic is cr

  • Hater Movement (Score:3)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:48PM (#50489921) Homepage Journal

    The Maker Movement is really just another Hater Movement practicing The Politics of Exclusion. Maker Privilege must be Checked and Confronted wherever it may try to hide -- even in the deep subconscious of Haters [theage.com.au] -- as yet another Badge of Slavery.

    How can we remedy this attempt to revive the antebellum South in a new and insidious guise?

    Are we to wait decades upon decades for True Equality to triumph as it hasn't yet in the area of Racial Equality?

    NO!

    Slavery must be met with slavery!

    Haters should be forced to Make whatever people who aren't want.

    Only then can we achieve Social Justice In Our Time.

  • About 15 years and twenty pounds.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ozoner ( 1406169 )

      Yes. In every generation there are talented amateurs who create interesting things, and those who try to make money out of them.

      The Hacker movement is just the latest of such parasites.

  • Why do people keep confusing "democratizing" with "entitling?" Because the urge here appears to be to take other people's money and to use it to subsidize an activity for people who haven't raised the money or made the effort it to support it for themselves. That's not "democracy," and it has nothing to do with such.

  • Where you have democracy you have division. The Maker Movement is all about community, all about just fucking doing it, all about togetherness in venture, all about maximising the potential of the individual by using his skills where appropriate and someone else doing what he can't, all about sharing the rewards. Fuck democracy. All that does is alienate 49% of the participants who will then go do something else, to the detriment of the community.

    Democracy in such an environment is asking a carpenter to do

  • Sure make the Maker movement more inclusive ... but democratic? Are we going to vote on who Made the Most Marvellous Make? Vote in some Glorious Leaders to tell us what to do?

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