The Empowerment of the Customer!
The Maker Movement empowers people to develop productive forces — to be manufacturers themselves — more than ever before in history.
The Maker Movement is revolutionizing manufacturing. It is influencing the means of production and of exchange.
Part I of this series introduces the shift of means of professional grade production because of the Maker Movement. Part II is looking at the effects on exchange and argues that an empowered customer is good for businesses. Part III exemplifies how we all can profit from a Maker Culture to live a more intentional, sustainable, individual lifestyle.
In retrospect it becomes seemingly easy to define a certain time in history as an Industrial Revolution. We don’t know if we are a part of it right now and it doesn’t matter to us as we don't want to take a too a distant scientific view but more a reflective stance on what is going on and how we believe value can be raised.
Therefore, the term Maker Movement coins nothing more than the rise of technology-based do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-with-others (DIWO) with a couple of distinctions and enabled by certain developments. In its result the Maker Movement has led to the creation of a number of technology products and solutions by individuals that would once have required a supportive infrastructure on industrial scale. With the Maker Movement those have moved to the desktop. 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC milling and routing,… are becoming more available and more accessible — not necessarily on your own desktop, but in your periphery. How does this look like?
People have made products themselves since the dawn of mankind. machinery to farm, weapons to hunt, shelter and furniture, doors and gates and fences,… Today sophisticated machinery is available on broader and wider dimensions than ever before in history. It has become accessible and local as the decreasing cost of electronic components, energy to power the machinery, etc. has become abundant and local. And the most important, the Internet has made information resources and social community available to everyone. The amount of information resources now available to individuals is increasing especially in regards to building sophisticated electronically controlled machinery and how to use it and what to do with it.
Local and online communities foster the creation of personal technology and is a driving force for a convenience of usability and functional improvements and reliability. Most of the products created under the maker movement are open-source, and anyone can access and create them using available documentation and manuals.
Therefore the maker movement goes beyond machines, robotics and electronic devices. It has lead to a general rise in adoption of more traditional production methods, and also arts and crafts. It has become a Maker Culture. With even more people sharing and celebrating its values and norms (q.v. The Artisanal and the Maker Movement).
Further Resources
Fallows, James. “Why the Maker Movement Matters: Part 1, the Tools Revolution” In: American Futures Series. The Atlantic, Jun 5, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/why-the-maker-movement-matters-part-1-the-tools-revolution/485720/.
“Does the Maker Movement Matter?” In: American Futures Series. The Atlantic. 2016.
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/all/2016/06/does-the-maker-movement-matter/486647/
MacMillan, Thomas. “On State Street, “Maker” Movement Arrives”. New Haven Independent, Apr 30, 2012. http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/make_haven/id_46594.
Weidinger, Nicolas. “Maker Cities,” Institute for the Future, Jan 03, 2013.
http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/maker-cities2/.
“Maker culture,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maker_culture (retrieved December 2, 2017).
