An insurgency has been brewing for a few years now, made up of the inventive, the curious and the technologically restless. It’s called the Maker Movement, and it has brought the pre-1970s world of basement workshops and amateur tinkering into the digital age.

Through two magazines, Make and Craft, and an array of blogs and events called Maker Faires, participants share ideas for previously unimagined tools, toys and forms of locomotion. Their goal is to reassert creative control over technology, which is now so sophisticated and magically opaque that we are its loving hostages. Lots of people are content to lay back and let iPhone and Google tell them where and who they are — Makers are not those people.

…(the) mission is taking the Maker mentality to manufacturers, urging them to make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose or even reinvent. Instead of churning out disposables, they end up making collector’s items, and legendary brands. They turn customers into fierce advocates.

“I really want companies to start thinking about shared innovation,” Mr. Jalopy said, “to realize that they’re not selling to customers, but to collaborators.

(Read the Excerpted from the New York Times. Read the Full Article!)

Posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 by Margaret Bossen