Makers, Hackers and the Personal Computer Revolution

Things are changing in the field of product development. Bottom-up, open-sourced and crowd-funded efforts are creating a Cambrian-type efflorescence of software and hardware products. People are creating and patronizing institutions like hackerspaces, open-source hardware manufacturers and open machine shops. This maker movementappears to be a logical extension of the open-source software movement to the field of tangible products.

This is not news to someone who was present at the creation of the personal computer industry, when most industry experts could not understand why relatively unqualified people were striving to build, understand and program machines that could only be called primitive. Rather, it forms an interesting confirmation that similar motivations are at work and that significant outcomes are probable.

I will explore the motivations underlying both phenomena and some parallels and divergences in the hope of providing a deeper understanding of prospects for the maker movement. I will examine how this movement might fit into economic and social currents at play within industrial society.

Speaker: Lee Felenstein, The Fonly Institute