So with all the talk recently both in favor of and the rather cynical counter-take on the whole 'new industrial revolution' I figure that it might be good for someone who's personally involved within that movement to state their thoughts on the topic. Take it for what you will, for this is just my view of the situation, but so far most of what I've seen written about it hasn't come from anyone directly involved with it.
Who am I to talk about it? Well, a few years ago my wife and I bought a CNC routing table without much idea beyond making cool stuff with it. As a matter of fact, it's the very first blog post on this blog. We'd never even used a CNC machine before, actually never even seen one before in person, but figured that we could figure it out, and with help from others online and the company we bought it from we got it running. We started making stuff for friends. That blossomed into a business. Pretty soon we quit our day jobs, and now we're even hiring people. We were the first ones to bring a CNC router to Maker Faire. Hell, my wife and business co-founder's picture was on the poster for the first two years of Maker faire. So we're smack in the middle of this 'movement' I think.
Everyone seems to be having a hard time figuring out exactly what to call what we're doing. We've had this problem too. In fact, I have yet to hear anything that really nails it. But this guy comes the closest with the thought of calling it 'punk manufacturing'.
Let's take a brief look at punk rock then. OK, so before punk, it was thought that in order to be in a great band you'd need to be a virtuoso. Get signed by a big label and all that. Rock music was all about big production, big ideas, big marketing, and 15 minute guitar solos. Then along comes punk. Suddenly, anyone with a good idea and passion can have a great band. Get rich? Probably not. But at least have a chance to be something more than whatever they were before. Have some great stories. Maybe even make enough money to just play music and not have to work some crap job.
And for most that was enough. I mean, heck, leisure for half the people on this planet is a full stomach, so getting to play music for a living, even if it's a lower middle class living, sounds like a hell of a deal to me. Sure, by the second or third wave you had punk bands like Green Day making a killing, and all that big media stuff getting back into it, but even those Green Day guys were starving teenage punks at one point, just playing music because they loved it, and riding that for as long as they could.
So now we've got the 'Makers Movement'. The new industrial revolution. But honestly, it's just a bunch of folks that via new possibilities can do what they have always wanted to do: make stuff. I think that both extremes of the Wired article and Gizmodo's response totally miss the fundamental point: it's really about freedom. Freedom for those of us who have only wanted to make things, to be able to do so, and make enough of a living that we can spend all our time doing what we love.
The sad reality that I have seen today is that anyone interested in making things goes to school for many years with the hope of being able to make fantastic things. Then they graduate, only to work on soul depraving things for years on end. Either pushing lines around in a CAD program drawing bathrooms, or designing headlights to purposely break in around five years. These are the tasks kids out of collage are given, and it drains them. Only after working for a very long time, or playing well at inter-office political games, or becoming an academic to support themselves, or being really, really lucky, only then do they even have the very remote chance of being in any sort of leadership role; deciding what's getting made. I know so many disheartened engineers, architects and industrial designers. Once in the real world, they've found that no matter how good their ideas are, or how much passion they have, or how hard they work, it simply dosen't matter. Until they fight their way to the top they are going to be nothing but a cog in some vast design machine.
We all went into this wanting to make stuff, and came out not making much of anything.
So along comes cheap hardware, cheap CNC machines, and the Internet. Suddenly, we can all make stuff. All the stuff we've always wanted. And, hopefully, we can find lots of people to sell it to. People who love it. Heck, maybe we can even keep our day jobs, and make stuff on the side. Or we can start our own business 100% and see if our ideas will really fly. We can make the stuff that our friends will love. We can make the stuff that we love. It opens up vast new areas. Just like with punk, all it takes is an instrument and an idea and you're on your way. Are you going to be a rock star? Get rich? Probably not, but who cares about all that corny self-centered stuff when you're having this much fun simply doing it?
So will it change the world? You know what, us Makers really don't care. We're having too much fun doing what we love. We're free to simply follow whatever idea we've got as far as we can. If you think for a second I'm not going to ride that for all I can, when all I've ever wanted to do in my life is make great things, then you've got a strange idea of how people work.
There seems to be a crazy idea today that if you're not trying to be the next Google, that whatever you're doing is stupid. Or if what you're doing isn't going to make you famous, then it's not worth doing. The truth is, most people would be more than happy to be free to do what they love and make enough money at it to have a decent life.
Honestly, I can't help but wonder if both the Wired wild-eyed fanboy response, and the very cynical counter-response, is partially from envy, and partially from being bitter at being stuck at a desk job. What's wrong with a bunch of new small business sprouting up all over America? Small business built this country, small business are the backbone of this country, and frankly, big business has zero interest in a lot of local issues where small businesses are all about local issues. If this movement launches a slew of new small businesses, I think it will indeed have an impact on our world, every bit as much as the Internet has.
The Gizmodo article does raise one very valid point: not everyone is going to be part of this thing. Which is fine, really. Everyone having access to guitars didn't make us all punk rockers. Everyone having access to a computer didn't turn us all into programmers. Everyone having access to a worldwide publishing system didn't make us all interesting bloggers. So everyone having access to manufacturing capability isn't going to make everyone suddenly a professional Maker. And that's OK.
Let's look at it this way: I'm now a small business owner, making a middle-class life for myself, and starting to employ others. While over the last two years the world famous Architecture firm I used to work for has laid off almost half it's staff. Working for a big company is no more stable than what we're doing, and heck, what we're doing seems to be working pretty well so far. I'm adding a lot more value to the overall GDP and my local community now then I was when I was working for that big firm. I'm creating real value, here, in my backyard. And while I loved working at that big firm, and running our own thing is terribly stressful and hard at times, man, I wouldn't go back unless I had absolutely no other choice.
In other words life isn't just about profit, nor is that the only meter one should measure a business with. I feel both Wired and Gizmodo totally missed the point here: it's about freedom and happiness, plain and simple.
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