The 1980s was a remarkable time for digital technology. Pioneers forging a new way forward into the digital realm would forever change the way people viewed and interacted with the world. But was it really just the technology that made this epoch so extraordinary, or was it something more. You had small groups of people developing digital devices out of their garage with little to no instruction and a mostly non-existent social network. This spirit of innovation and adventure attracted some very exotic personalities that helped us realize the vision for a different world. But, since then, where has that creativity gone. Yes, we still have a few techno wunderkinds who have helped us realize technology in new ways, but that get-down-and-dirty attitude that the 80’s embodied has shifted. Have the people changed? Or has technology become so advanced that it has stifled our desire to create and extinguished that curiosity and childish wonder from the days of yore. Well my answer to this burning question is “No.”

Enter the Maker Movement. A movement whose idea is to resurrect the mad scientist tucked away in his garage, tinkering away for hours in hopes of creating something that might one-day change the world. Or, at the very least, change his. This movement has moved the prototyping that used to be reserved for industries and institutions with large R&D departments, down to the business manager who always wanted to have a robot open and poor her a glass of wine. It has completely rebooted the hobbyist and tinkering DIY mentality that had previously been dominated by the open-source software community. Many might call the new Maker Movement a spin-off of the software open-source communities, but from my experience, I believe it has brought a whole new attitude to the idea of computing and the spirit of making things. Now the part-time musician can team up with the full-time mechanic to build an auto-synthesizing device from cheap parts and how-to instructions online. The barrier to entry is literally non-existent, which is why this culture has incited a movement complete with its own maker-cons, fairs, and underground lairs.

I find the real attraction to the movement is the ability to create-everyday items personally outfitted for your life. In the early 1900s it seems they too had this issue. The questions was, why had craftsmanship died? A respondent to the query, Mary Dennet, wrote this in her response. She said, “The employed craftsman can almost never use in his own home things similar to those he works on every day,” she observed, because those things were simply unaffordable. Economics, not aesthetics, explained the movement’s failures. “The modern man, who should be a craftsman, but who, in most cases, is compelled by force of circumstances to be a mill operative, has no [other choice].”(1) Mary was forward-looking, because the same issues of affordability, time, and usefulness that plagued the craftsmen of the early 1900s, are the same things that hindered us before the new hacking age. Now the parts, expertise, and knowledge are readily available to us at the click of a button, or better yet, at the swipe of a screen.

Technology should always be a revolution; creation through chaos. The only way to tap into the best humanity has to offer is to enable people with the means and opportunity – the ethos of the Maker Movement. So that now, with a Swiss army knife, some duct tape, and a pile of circuit boards we can all be MacGyvers of the 21st century.