Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Garnet Hertz]

This discussion is great - I just subscribed with Chris's message to me -
it's nice to connect with like-minded people around this topic. I've
obviously been hanging around the wrong places online (like Facebook).

"maker as a disconnection to class struggle" - I could talk about this for
YEARS - or at least thousands of words (see below if you don't believe me):

In my view (and I know I'm preaching to the choir here) is that the maker
movement was primarily an attempt to standardize, spread and commercialize
what artists and hackers were already doing into a “Martha Stewart for
Geeks” by Make magazine. The founders literally used "Martha Stewart for
Geeks" as their vision - this isn't a metaphor. My book project, for
example, looks to articulate one of the many strands of this scene that
predated making — DIY electronics in art — and it reaches back nearly a
hundred years. As many of you know, it has a totally fascinating history.
Other strands include hacker culture since the 1970s, the free software
movement since 1983, ubiquitous computing since 1991, open source hardware
since 1997, the explosion of craft practices since Y2K, the Arduino
platform since 2003, the FabLab movement since 2005, and the material turn
of philosophy over the past several decades — all of these are maker
movements, and most of them are more of a social movement than what Make
has envisioned. The maker movement as articulated by Make lacks fuel of its
own and offers little of unique cultural value beyond giving us the
nondisciplinary label of the ‘maker’ in 2005. Make magazine organized,
promoted and ‘platformed’ the maker movement as its brand, but the
leadership of makers came from other sources (as noted above).

What is most interesting about the idea of making is not the term itself —
it is the pieces of hacking, craft, DIY culture and electronic art that
were left out of constructing the idea of the "maker" (at least in North
America), which was largely carved out by Maker Media to serve its private
business needs related to selling magazines and event tickets. Maker Media
very clearly sanitized things from the hacker scene (maker = hacker -
controversy) and from the art/DIY scene (Dorkbot, especially - which I ran
in Los Angeles at the time). The newer understanding of ‘making’ is not
really an all-encompassing term for all, but is focused on a specific
subset of ideas, primarily exists in a limited geography of influence, has
a limited ecosystem of tools, and follows a specific form for projects that
are considerably different and more constrained than the ‘making’ that
existed before. The scene envisioned by Maker Media was almost exclusively
focused on producing work as a leisure pursuit, which is a total
misunderstanding with how many hackers or artists work.

In retrospect, the maker scene rode two major waves: the Arduino and 3D
printing. I see its death as partially a result of never being able to find
a third wave. Maker Media was also constructed as a relatively financially
heavy structure that needed a lot of fuel to survive -- it wasn't an artist
collective. In terms of financial waves, the Arduino provided vital
technological, social and ethical glue that massively helped Make magazine
launch. The Ardunio technical platform provided an accessible and uniform
venue for sharing project prototypes, and its open source hardware provided
a novel and exciting blueprint for how physical electronic objects could be
prototyped and distributed. The Arduino and Make had a symbiotic and
intertwined relationship with each other, with Arduino providing the
hardware, mindset and seed community for Make, and Make providing media
coverage and scores of fresh users for the Arduino hardware platform.

A similarly intertwined relationship formed a few years later between
consumer-level 3D printing and Make magazine and its affiliated Maker
Faire. In hindsight, the 3D printing movement was synonymous with the maker
movement between 2009 to 2013, and this impact is still felt today. Of the
many projects and companies involved in the rapid expansion of inexpensive
3D printing after 2009, MakerBot was central — and Make magazine largely
served as its promotional sidekick.

The maker movement is somewhat significant in that it highlights how
alienated contemporary western culture has become from the manual craft of
building your own objects, and how wholly absorbed it has been enveloped in
consumer culture. The maker movement works counter this alienation, but
does so with considerably broad strokes — almost to the extent that making
anything qualifies as being part of the movement. Instead of looking at the
maker movement as a large interdisciplinary endeavour, it can also be
interpreted as a re-categorization of all manual fabrication under a single
banner. Language typically expands into a rich lexicon of terms when a
field grows, and the generality of ‘making’ is the polar opposite.
Ceramicists, welders, sculptors, luthiers, ama

Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it.

[Jordan Crandall]

Like Sean I’ve been active long ago, lurking for a decade or more.  It’s good 
to be prodded to contribute.  I thought of jumping in during some of the recent 
discussions, notably the ‘Rage against the machine’ thread, but unsure about 
how my writing will fit in, as I have been writing fiction these days and 
thinking in narrative terms.  It is difficult to see how it could work in the 
context of this kind of discussion.  Perhaps I will try.  Best to all.  Jordan


> On Jun 8, 2019, at 8:21 AM, Sean Cubitt  wrote:
> 
> I've been active long ago, and lurking for a decade or more, with only 
> sporadic comments and adds: this look like a good prod to get us silent 
> majority out of the closet.
> 
> the thing that keeps nettime valuable is a) the contributors, timeliness, and 
> swift smart dialogues and b) that there still seems to be a common purpose. 
> 
> social media start taking the forefront about ten years ago. The neo-populist 
> right begins to replace the neo-liberal right about ten years ago. Is there 
> some shared diagram? 
> 
> Other lists died for their own reasons: one because it seemed like everything 
> interesting was on blogs, back when the blogosphere was a thing. Another 
> because a concept / art movement / political trajectory could be exhausted so 
> fast it scarcely seemed worth inventing new concepts etc. 
> 
> Mailing lists are asynchronous, which is great: more time to think; less 
> kudos for fast reaction times. More consideration in every sense of the word
> 
> in a few days I'll try to post something closer than this reflection on the 
> medium to what I think this list is for: the aesthetics, politics and 
> aesthetic politics of the early C21st -- consideration, wonder and hope
> 
> Sean
> 
> 
> From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org  on 
> behalf of nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org 
> Sent: 08 June 2019 15:45
> To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
> Subject: nettime-l Digest, Vol 141, Issue 11
>  
> Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
> nettime-l@mail.kein.org
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
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> mx.kein.org
> -- a moderated mailing list for net criticism  is not just a mailing 
> list but an effort to formulate an international, networked discourse that 
> neither promotes a dominant euphoria (to sell products) nor continues the 
> cynical pessimism, spread by journalists and intellectuals in the 'old' media 
> who generalize about 'new' media with no clear understanding of their 
> communication aspects ...
> 
> 
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> nettime-l-ow...@mail.kein.org
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>1. Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change   it.
>   (John Preston)
>2. The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors;
>   throws in the towel (Bruce Sterling)
>3. Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change   it.
>   (John Preston)
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2019 15:06:56 +0100
> From: John Preston 
> To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
> Subject: Re:  Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can
> change  it.
> Message-ID: <07a59428-bf8f-419b-841a-ea06bddb2...@riseup.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Just forwarding this up.
> 
> 
>  Original Message 
> From: Karim Brohi 
> Sent: 8 June 2019 14:35:45 BST
> To: John Preston 
> Subject: Re:  Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it.
> 
> Nettime is in bad shape - as are most (all?) of the email based discussion
> groups on the Interwebs now.
> I run another mailing list, started in 1995 in a medical specialty area- -
> which finds itself in the same state.  Back then email was cool.  Now, for
> most, email tends to be a flood of work stuff and a pseudo todo list.
> Drafting an email is now work, and not associated with pleasure or pure
> intellectual pursuit.
> 
> But there's no other suitable medium either.  Social media platforms are
> too brief to develop ideas.  Too easy to fire back "your idea is stupid".
> Blog posts and newsletters are too one-sided.  Developed/owned by a
> specific individual/group of individuals, Comments never have the same
> precedence as the original post.  The post 'belongs' to the originator, not
> to the community.
> 
> Maybe usenet/google groups comes close, but nobody uses them - perhaps
> because there's no (effective) 'app for that', and there has to be an
> active process of logging in.  (Email alerts end up in... email).
> 
> In brief - I think it's the medium not the message.  The whole Internet
> needs a new mediu

Re: less (net time) is more

[Will Jackson]

I wish I had hit up Brian Holmes for a beer while I lived in Chicago.

On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 11:07 AM "Nina Temporär"  wrote:

> This sentence is the nettime problem in a nutshell
>
> >why narrow it down to your favourite
> > prejudices ?
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Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Richard Sewell]

Adrian - I'd agree with all of that - but can you say a bit more about 
the last bit:
"working out how we carry that forward into ways to manufacture 
everything else"


R.

On 12/06/2019 21:20, Adrian McEwen wrote:
I think the points both of you make are important.  Everyone should 
have the agency (if they choose to use it, not everyone has to be a 
maker) to make whatever they like /and/ we should be helping those who 
want to build businesses around their making to do so and succeed.


In DoES Liverpool the more commercially-minded makers benefit from the 
experiments and skill-sharing of those "just" pursuing an interest; 
and the culture of knowledge- and skill-sharing goes the other way 
too, along with a greater contribution to the financial cost of 
running the makerspace.


James, I think I did a poor job of crafting the sentence you quoted.  
As I said earlier in my post "we /did/ deliberately choose to 
encourage more businesses", and they do benefit the space.  Your point 
elsewhere about the utility of laser-cutters over 3D printers is borne 
out in our experience too, with there being six more laser-cutters in 
the city as a direct result of businesses getting started using ours 
and then outgrowing our facilities and buying their own (and of those, 
four of them are businesswomen).


The makerspace (/maker movement) doesn't need to protect itself 
against businesses, it needs to protect itself against bad actors 
acting badly.


If we're going to find a route to a future where an open-source, 
collaborative mindset and widely distributed (and cost-effectively 
scaleable) manufacturing allows a panoply of individual and 
earning-a-good-living making, we need to carve out spaces and time for 
that to take shape.  The risk is that it's co-opted into a 
business-as-usual mainstream.


A raft of new artisans succeeding at an arts-and-crafts movement for 
the modern day is a good step in the right direction, and we need to 
be working out how we carry that forward into ways to manufacture 
everything else.


Cheers,

Adrian.

On 12/06/2019 17:35, Richard Sewell wrote:
James - I think from my point of view the greatest value of the maker 
movement has been an explosion of people making things that don't 
entirely make sense and that are not intended as commercial ventures. 
That's not an issue, that's the point. They are learning that they 
can pull ideas out of their heads into the real world, they are 
learning to envision things and then make them and then learn from 
them, and they are making their own marvels


I'm very much in favour of startups and the kinds of enterprises that 
have sprung out of the world of makers, but only a small fraction of 
the people that want to make things actually want to make it into a 
business. It's one of the things about Make's approach that I never 
really got on with - the idea that there was a sort of admirable or 
even inevitable progression from making things for yourself to 
starting a business.


Richard

On 12/06/2019 16:19, James Wallbank wrote:

Hi Adrian,

I'm really interested in this comment:

"There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap 
their startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by 
someone only out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly 
manages to protect itself from that."


My view is that the key to wider adoption of superlocal making is 
not just to allow, but to encourage people to use your space to 
bootstrap their startup, and find some way to that the space 
benefits via that.


In our case at "Makers", we manufacture for others for money, so 
there's nobody we like better than people who are bootstrapping a 
startup and shifting lots of product! As peoples' micro-enterprises 
take off, we make, they pay, and they take away items of greater 
value than we charge. Everyone's winning!


The issue, it seems to me, is that many makers want to make "just 
out of interest" and manufacture fascinating things that just don't 
make economic sense. For us, having a shop in front of our workshop 
really helps - when you put something on the shelf, you can start, 
quite easily, to see what price it must have to sell (not always 
lower than you hoped, BTW). Typical maker products, chock-full of 
sensors, logic and LEDs, often cost more than people will pay for them.


Getting to grips with the reality of products, and the hard facts of 
economies of scale (a wifi enabled, music playing, colour changing 
light-bulb retails for £6!) starts people thinking about "the new 
economy". Things people are prepared to pay a sensible price for are 
ludicrously specific and particular. They're about them, their 
lives, and their particular context.


This flies in the face of just about everything we've been taught 
(and how we've been taught) about making: look for the common 
factors, ways to increase efficiency, ways to generalise solutions, 
methods to scale up. Perhaps we need to start thinking about the 

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Adrian McEwen]

I think the points both of you make are important.  Everyone should have 
the agency (if they choose to use it, not everyone has to be a maker) to 
make whatever they like /and/ we should be helping those who want to 
build businesses around their making to do so and succeed.


In DoES Liverpool the more commercially-minded makers benefit from the 
experiments and skill-sharing of those "just" pursuing an interest; and 
the culture of knowledge- and skill-sharing goes the other way too, 
along with a greater contribution to the financial cost of running the 
makerspace.


James, I think I did a poor job of crafting the sentence you quoted.  As 
I said earlier in my post "we /did/ deliberately choose to encourage 
more businesses", and they do benefit the space.  Your point elsewhere 
about the utility of laser-cutters over 3D printers is borne out in our 
experience too, with there being six more laser-cutters in the city as a 
direct result of businesses getting started using ours and then 
outgrowing our facilities and buying their own (and of those, four of 
them are businesswomen).


The makerspace (/maker movement) doesn't need to protect itself against 
businesses, it needs to protect itself against bad actors acting badly.


If we're going to find a route to a future where an open-source, 
collaborative mindset and widely distributed (and cost-effectively 
scaleable) manufacturing allows a panoply of individual and 
earning-a-good-living making, we need to carve out spaces and time for 
that to take shape.  The risk is that it's co-opted into a 
business-as-usual mainstream.


A raft of new artisans succeeding at an arts-and-crafts movement for the 
modern day is a good step in the right direction, and we need to be 
working out how we carry that forward into ways to manufacture 
everything else.


Cheers,

Adrian.

On 12/06/2019 17:35, Richard Sewell wrote:
James - I think from my point of view the greatest value of the maker 
movement has been an explosion of people making things that don't 
entirely make sense and that are not intended as commercial ventures. 
That's not an issue, that's the point. They are learning that they can 
pull ideas out of their heads into the real world, they are learning 
to envision things and then make them and then learn from them, and 
they are making their own marvels


I'm very much in favour of startups and the kinds of enterprises that 
have sprung out of the world of makers, but only a small fraction of 
the people that want to make things actually want to make it into a 
business. It's one of the things about Make's approach that I never 
really got on with - the idea that there was a sort of admirable or 
even inevitable progression from making things for yourself to 
starting a business.


Richard

On 12/06/2019 16:19, James Wallbank wrote:

Hi Adrian,

I'm really interested in this comment:

"There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that."


My view is that the key to wider adoption of superlocal making is not 
just to allow, but to encourage people to use your space to bootstrap 
their startup, and find some way to that the space benefits via that.


In our case at "Makers", we manufacture for others for money, so 
there's nobody we like better than people who are bootstrapping a 
startup and shifting lots of product! As peoples' micro-enterprises 
take off, we make, they pay, and they take away items of greater 
value than we charge. Everyone's winning!


The issue, it seems to me, is that many makers want to make "just out 
of interest" and manufacture fascinating things that just don't make 
economic sense. For us, having a shop in front of our workshop really 
helps - when you put something on the shelf, you can start, quite 
easily, to see what price it must have to sell (not always lower than 
you hoped, BTW). Typical maker products, chock-full of sensors, logic 
and LEDs, often cost more than people will pay for them.


Getting to grips with the reality of products, and the hard facts of 
economies of scale (a wifi enabled, music playing, colour changing 
light-bulb retails for £6!) starts people thinking about "the new 
economy". Things people are prepared to pay a sensible price for are 
ludicrously specific and particular. They're about them, their lives, 
and their particular context.


This flies in the face of just about everything we've been taught 
(and how we've been taught) about making: look for the common 
factors, ways to increase efficiency, ways to generalise solutions, 
methods to scale up. Perhaps we need to start thinking about the 
unique, the special, the "only works here and now". Perhaps the 
things that the new artisans will manufacture in each locality will 
be not just the hard to replicate at scale, but the pointless to 
replicate at scal

Re: Two possible books for discussion?

[Nina Temporär]

Absolutely,

check this out:
http://stopmotionstudies.net/pdf/bohm_07_07.pdf
and
http://turbulence.org/spotlight/crawford/index.html

#Bohm

Best N
 

Gesendet: Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2019 um 21:40 Uhr
Von: "Max Herman" 
An: "nettime-l@mail.kein.org" 
Betreff:  Two possible books for discussion?



 

Hi all,

 

I recently found out about David Bohm's 1996 book On Dialogue, and have been interested in Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium for a couple of years.

 

Are either of these relevant for or about discussion approaches?

 

Thanks,

 

Max
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Two possible books for discussion?

[Max Herman]

Hi all,

I recently found out about David Bohm's 1996 book On Dialogue, and have been 
interested in Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium for a couple of 
years.

Are either of these relevant for or about discussion approaches?

Thanks,

Max
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Richard Sewell]

James - I think from my point of view the greatest value of the maker 
movement has been an explosion of people making things that don't 
entirely make sense and that are not intended as commercial ventures. 
That's not an issue, that's the point. They are learning that they can 
pull ideas out of their heads into the real world, they are learning to 
envision things and then make them and then learn from them, and they 
are making their own marvels


I'm very much in favour of startups and the kinds of enterprises that 
have sprung out of the world of makers, but only a small fraction of the 
people that want to make things actually want to make it into a 
business. It's one of the things about Make's approach that I never 
really got on with - the idea that there was a sort of admirable or even 
inevitable progression from making things for yourself to starting a 
business.


Richard

On 12/06/2019 16:19, James Wallbank wrote:

Hi Adrian,

I'm really interested in this comment:

"There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that."


My view is that the key to wider adoption of superlocal making is not 
just to allow, but to encourage people to use your space to bootstrap 
their startup, and find some way to that the space benefits via that.


In our case at "Makers", we manufacture for others for money, so 
there's nobody we like better than people who are bootstrapping a 
startup and shifting lots of product! As peoples' micro-enterprises 
take off, we make, they pay, and they take away items of greater value 
than we charge. Everyone's winning!


The issue, it seems to me, is that many makers want to make "just out 
of interest" and manufacture fascinating things that just don't make 
economic sense. For us, having a shop in front of our workshop really 
helps - when you put something on the shelf, you can start, quite 
easily, to see what price it must have to sell (not always lower than 
you hoped, BTW). Typical maker products, chock-full of sensors, logic 
and LEDs, often cost more than people will pay for them.


Getting to grips with the reality of products, and the hard facts of 
economies of scale (a wifi enabled, music playing, colour changing 
light-bulb retails for £6!) starts people thinking about "the new 
economy". Things people are prepared to pay a sensible price for are 
ludicrously specific and particular. They're about them, their lives, 
and their particular context.


This flies in the face of just about everything we've been taught (and 
how we've been taught) about making: look for the common factors, ways 
to increase efficiency, ways to generalise solutions, methods to scale 
up. Perhaps we need to start thinking about the unique, the special, 
the "only works here and now". Perhaps the things that the new 
artisans will manufacture in each locality will be not just the hard 
to replicate at scale, but the pointless to replicate at scale.


Cheers,

James

P.S. Was talk of the death of Nettime somewhat premature?

=

On 12/06/2019 15:20, Adrian McEwen wrote:


There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that.



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Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Carsten Agger]

On 6/11/19 5:27 PM, Jaromil wrote:
> dear Bruce and nettimers,
>
[...]
> 3. the "shamanic" value that can be embedded in uses of technologies,
>as opposed to the sanitized and rational interpretation given by
>designers in the west. Techno-shamanism is something Fabi Borges,
>Vicky Sinclair and other good folks in Bricolabs have been busy for
>ages!

Thanks for mentioning this, Jaromil!

Yes, the maker movement has been largely oblivious to the shamanic and
spiritual aspects and uses of technology, which also affects the very
definition of "technology" as a concept. We ay have our modern
technology, but the indigenous peoples have their ancestral technologies
which are in many ways superior to our own when it comes to interacting
with this our planet; *and* which combine with modern technologies in
many interesting ways.

At the moment, we in the technoshamanistm network (myself, Fabi Borges,
Rafael Frazão, Raísa Innocêncio and a number of others) have an ongoing
collaboration (since 2014) with the Pataxó village of Pará near Monte
Pascoal. These indigenous people are, in a way, the original makers:
They build their own houses and grow their food themselves - in these
modern times, this extends to fixing their own motorbikes and buggys.

Our current project is to raise money for a collaborative effort to
create a health centre in the village. The purpose is partly to offer
facilities for visiting nurses and doctors (so the Pataxó might be
attended, at intervals, without travelling too far), partly to create a
centre for indigenous healing methods. These structures will be built by
a communal effort in November, in which people are invited to
participate - to lend a hand, but also to learn from the Pataxó and
their ways. 

If you feel this sounds like a good idea and would like to help it
happen, feel free to chip in at the end of this link:

https://www.catarse.me/mutirao_da_saude_pataxo_2019


In the meanwhile, if you want to get a sense for who the Pataxó are and
what kind of work we do in the technoshamanism network, feel free to
check out the pictures from the festival we did with the Pataxó, back in
2016:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22405820@N08/albums/72157673936765924


Best

Carsten


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Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Alice Yang]

Been enjoying everyone’s replies and I especially like the suggestion of the 
term maker as a disconnection to class struggle as well as seeing it from 
outside of the west.

Most of the actual “makers” of our electronic products are women of color 
working in factories in the third and developing world. I’d compare the maker 
subculture with other craft subcultures like knitting or embroidery. While 
these things exist as a hobby in the first world, most of our textile 
production is done by an exploited female class.

In the west, sewing can be seen as a reclaiming of time, as feminist, and 
community building, as liberation. The maker subculture seems to have similar 
values. However, if we consider the fact that most sewing and making is not 
liberating for the producers, who are women of color with no social security 
and low wages, of our technology, can crafting still be considered liberatory?

> On Jun 12, 2019, at 9:17 AM, James Wallbank  wrote:
> 
> Fascinating to hear about personal engagement in Making, Graham!
> 
> 
> I, too, have been personally, hands-on involved in Making since Access 
> Space's turn towards digital manufacture, and the interface of the physical 
> and the digital, since around 2010.
> 
> 
> (For those of you who aren't aware of Access Space, it started as a "DIY 
> Media Lab" which I and various friends who had accreted around "Redundant 
> Technology Initiative" (lowtech.org) in 2000. It re-interpreted donated 
> digital debris as resource, rebuilding computers, installing free operating 
> systems, making them available to participants, and encouraging and 
> supporting creative, self-directed projects.)
> 
> 
> Part of the motivation behind Access Space was our hope that digital 
> engagement and skills had the potential to empower. This proved to be the 
> case in the early 2000s, and numerous time-rich participants engaged with 
> Access Space, taught themselves and each other technological skills, and 
> became web designers, graphic designers, technicians or even better-known 
> artists. (Though whether "art" is, in the context of networked global 
> capital, a viable or empowering career for a statistically significant 
> proportion of its participants is, I suggest, in question.)
> 
> By 2010 we'd seen far less business incubation, and proportionately fewer 
> participants able to self-teach to a level that it made a real difference to 
> their life prospects or creative leverage. We saw that hardware and software 
> skills devalued as pre-installed devices became cheaper, and that the digital 
> realm was becoming dominated by global digital services, including social 
> media, that, while they didn't do a great job, diverted the vast majority of 
> potential digital design clients away from bespoke, local service providers.
> 
> In short, the window of opportunity suggested by the first phase of the 
> graphical internet was closing. While, in 2000, speed-reading an HTML primer, 
> combined with a little design flair, a few copywriting skills, and some sales 
> confidence could make you a web designer in a month, in 2010 this was no 
> longer the case.
> 
> 
> We concluded that when any new technology is introduced, there's a period of 
> opportunity, before that technology has become fully adopted or systematised, 
> in which the individual can get involved, and (in a short time, with a level 
> of skill only one page ahead of their clients) can empower themselves, 
> converting an interest into saleable skills, products or resources.
> 
> 
> We've seen the same window open and close with blockchain (which I believe to 
> be illusory, unproductive, and, in the end, simply gambling). A vanishingly 
> few people made money though cryptocurrency trading, but now it's dominated 
> by grinding Ponzi schemes, viral mining fiddles, or blockchain is being 
> repurposed by multinationals. The moment of opportunity for the individual 
> has passed.
> 
> 
> At Access Space we saw Fab Lab or "Maker Technologies" as a more genuinely 
> productive line of approach, and, even though many of the technologies had 
> been around for a decade or more, saw that the window of opportunity had not 
> yet closed. As technology requiring significant physical engagement and 
> investment (you need to buy real-world machines and materials!) the timescale 
> of its adoption and exploitation by capital would be far slower.
> 
> 
> So at Access Space we raised money (thanks EU structural funds!) and bought a 
> CNC, a Lasercutter, a 3D Printer, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, a digital 
> embroidery machine... and set about a research partnership to explore the 
> potentials of these technologies for creating local jobs and enterprises.
> 
> 
> In the end, for those not in the highfalutin' and disconnected academic realm 
> (sorry, researchers - you're my friends really!) a key element of whether a 
> technology is empowering or not is "Can you get paid for using it?"
> 
> 
> And "using it to enga

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[James Wallbank]

Hi Adrian,

I'm really interested in this comment:

"There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that."


My view is that the key to wider adoption of superlocal making is not 
just to allow, but to encourage people to use your space to bootstrap 
their startup, and find some way to that the space benefits via that.


In our case at "Makers", we manufacture for others for money, so there's 
nobody we like better than people who are bootstrapping a startup and 
shifting lots of product! As peoples' micro-enterprises take off, we 
make, they pay, and they take away items of greater value than we 
charge. Everyone's winning!


The issue, it seems to me, is that many makers want to make "just out of 
interest" and manufacture fascinating things that just don't make 
economic sense. For us, having a shop in front of our workshop really 
helps - when you put something on the shelf, you can start, quite 
easily, to see what price it must have to sell (not always lower than 
you hoped, BTW). Typical maker products, chock-full of sensors, logic 
and LEDs, often cost more than people will pay for them.


Getting to grips with the reality of products, and the hard facts of 
economies of scale (a wifi enabled, music playing, colour changing 
light-bulb retails for £6!) starts people thinking about "the new 
economy". Things people are prepared to pay a sensible price for are 
ludicrously specific and particular. They're about them, their lives, 
and their particular context.


This flies in the face of just about everything we've been taught (and 
how we've been taught) about making: look for the common factors, ways 
to increase efficiency, ways to generalise solutions, methods to scale 
up. Perhaps we need to start thinking about the unique, the special, the 
"only works here and now". Perhaps the things that the new artisans will 
manufacture in each locality will be not just the hard to replicate at 
scale, but the pointless to replicate at scale.


Cheers,

James

P.S. Was talk of the death of Nettime somewhat premature?

=

On 12/06/2019 15:20, Adrian McEwen wrote:


There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that.



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Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it.

[Tom Keene]

Hi Renée,
RE: I tend to make egregious typos & grammatical mistakes that I don't catch 
until it's about a week later. 
Same with me, i'm dyslexic and much prefer making and programming as a way to 
understand the world. On social media, particularly Twitter, I've learnt not to 
worry so much, though Nettime is a more intimidating space... 
Tom 


On Tue, 11 Jun 2019, at 6:20 AM, Renée Lynn Reizman wrote:
> Been a lurker on here for about 2 years. I am constantly thrilled by the 
> names I see popping up on this listserv. Seems like there are many members on 
> here who write or create things I admire. The conversations can be a bit 
> intimidating sometimes, but mostly I avoid chiming in because I tend to make 
> egregious typos & grammatical mistakes that I don't catch until it's about a 
> week later. 
> 
> Anyways, just wanted to say hello!
> 
> Renée
> http://www.reneereizman.com
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 9:51 AM  wrote:
>> Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
>> nettime-l@mail.kein.org
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>> 
>>  When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>>  than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..."
>> 
>> 
>>  Today's Topics:
>> 
>>  1. Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it.
>>  (v...@voyd.com)
>> 
>> 
>>  --
>> 
>>  Message: 1
>>  Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2019 12:47:10 -0400
>>  From: v...@voyd.com
>>  To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
>>  Subject: Re:  Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can
>>  change it.
>>  Message-ID:
>>  <1560098830.vqwx9ks2884g4...@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
>>  Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  Thanks, Sean and all for these salient replies.
>>  I have often been active here, but had been offline more than I like 
>> related to living in Arabia; some things you'd imagine, others not. More 
>> than anything else, I have been creating a VR research center and doing a 
>> snowstorm of paperwork. My intentions are to be here more, as my research is 
>> revving up again.
>> 
>>  I value Nettime a great deal in that it remains one of the places where a 
>> high concentration of fine minds, whether they pop in or out like virtual 
>> particles int he cyber-aether, usually pop out clear thought.
>> 
>>  Another thing is that for the past three years, I have been traveling into 
>> Central Asia, Married an Iranian, coming to know the Eastern Hemisphere, and 
>> seeing what Geert Lovink and I had long discussions on here in Abu Dhabi 
>> relating the slide of Krokerian Bimodernism to American global colonial war 
>> capitalism under the Plan for the New American Century to the collapse into 
>> spheres of influence with the rise of Trump.  Actually a lot more than 
>> this, but the flood of understanding has taken a while to coalesce.
>> 
>>  Looking forward to more conversation.
>> 
>> 
>>  On Sat, 8 Jun 2019 15:21:58 +, Sean Cubitt wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  I've been active long ago, and lurking for a decade or more, with only 
>> sporadic comments and adds: this look like a good prod to get us silent 
>> majority out of the closet.
>> 
>>   
>> 
>>  the thing that keeps nettime valuable is a) the 
>> contributors, timeliness, and swift smart dialogues and b) that 
>> there still seems to be a common purpose. 
>> 
>>   
>> 
>>  social media start taking the forefront about ten years ago. The 
>> neo-populist right begins to replace the neo-liberal right about ten years 
>> ago. Is there some shared diagram? 
>> 
>>   
>> 
>>  Other lists died for their own reasons: one because it seemed like 
>> everything interesting was on blogs, back when the blogosphere was a thing. 
>> Another because a concept / art movement / political trajectory could be 
>> exhausted so fast it scarcely seemed worth inventing new concepts etc. 
>> 
>>   
>> 
>>  Mailing lists are asynchronous, which is great: more time to think; less 
>> kudos for fast reaction times. More consideration in every sense of the word
>> 
>>   
>> 
>>  in a few days I'll try to post something closer than this reflection on the 
>> medium to what I think this list is for: the aesthetics, politics 
>> and aesthetic politics of the early C21st -- consideration, 
>> wonder and hope
>> 
>>   
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  Sean
>> 
>>   
>> 
>>   
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org > > on behalf of 
>> nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org > >
>>  Sent: 08 June 2019 15:45
>>  To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
>>  Subject: nettime-l Digest

Re: less (net time) is more

[Nina Temporär]

This sentence is the nettime problem in a nutshell

>why narrow it down to your favourite
> prejudices ?
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Re: less (net time) is more

[Andreas Broeckmann]

nina, i take the liberty to comment on your message anyway, since i fail 
to get the joke.


why override the good intention? why narrow it down to your favourite 
prejudices? everybody who posts here and makes him- or herself visible 
to others would (in this "convivial dream nettime") be a potential 
mentor; if you want morlock or alice to check up on you posting, go 
ahead, and if you prefer a panos or jaromil, go through them. (it's only 
an idea to suggest that it might sometimes be a good move to first ask 
somebody else whether it's the right thing to post, now...)


it looks like some lurkers here are waiting for encouragement, rather 
than a slap in the face.


"best" what?

-a


Am 12.06.19 um 16:39 schrieb "Nina Temporär":

Dear Andreas,
I know you mean it in a good way and are simply speculating...

...but just as little reminder - "mentor system": Yikes, that is
the perfect tool to render it most likely that hierarchies reproduce
themselves. It is gonna be like the vatican then. o_O

Also, as the problem of the list has been so far that it was mostly
white men "in their best years" (not saying old, am against ageism
ever since i start to turn old myself ;)) who are posting here,
what would be the solution: Older men mentoring younger women??
...
...
(don't need to comment on that ;))

...
...

Best N
*Gesendet:* Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2019 um 16:06 Uhr
*Von:* "Andreas Broeckmann" 
*An:* nettime 
*Betreff:* Re:  less (net time) is more
panos, friends,

i like this idea, especially because it highlights what is valuable
about many of the exchanges that include the conviviality of arguing.
(once upon a time, in the later 1990s, there was a string of such
meetings... [incl. big arguments about joint projects like the READ ME
publication])

i also like how panos's proposal gives a mild hint that loneliness might
be one of the ghosts that have haunted nettimers in the last months, or
longer.

maybe instead of creating a strict rule ("no single-author e-mails"),
panos's suggestion can be taken as an encouragement for all of us people
before posting: to whom can i show this before it gets posted?

so, "ideally", any message would come from a relay-person, a mentor
chosen by the author...

ok, i see the problems of such a system, but i like the feeling of being
in this "convivial dream nettime" for a while... ;-)

regards,
-a

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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: less (net time) is more

[Nina Temporär]

 
Dear Andreas,
I know you mean it in a good way and are simply speculating...

...but just as little reminder - "mentor system": Yikes, that is
the perfect tool to render it most likely that hierarchies reproduce
themselves. It is gonna be like the vatican then. o_O

Also, as the problem of the list has been so far that it was mostly
white men "in their best years" (not saying old, am against ageism
ever since i start to turn old myself ;)) who are posting here,
what would be the solution: Older men mentoring younger women??
...
...
(don't need to comment on that ;))

...
...

Best N

 

Gesendet: Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2019 um 16:06 Uhr
Von: "Andreas Broeckmann" 
An: nettime 
Betreff: Re:  less (net time) is more

panos, friends,

i like this idea, especially because it highlights what is valuable
about many of the exchanges that include the conviviality of arguing.
(once upon a time, in the later 1990s, there was a string of such
meetings... [incl. big arguments about joint projects like the READ ME
publication])

i also like how panos's proposal gives a mild hint that loneliness might
be one of the ghosts that have haunted nettimers in the last months, or
longer.

maybe instead of creating a strict rule ("no single-author e-mails"),
panos's suggestion can be taken as an encouragement for all of us people
before posting: to whom can i show this before it gets posted?

so, "ideally", any message would come from a relay-person, a mentor
chosen by the author...

ok, i see the problems of such a system, but i like the feeling of being
in this "convivial dream nettime" for a while... ;-)

regards,
-a


Am 11.06.19 um 23:03 schrieb panayotis antoniadis:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have been following since a few years and tried many times to write
> but for some reason never pressed the send button.
>
> It is perhaps that I was always wanting to suggest somehow obvious,
> simple things, which have been said before many times. But I do think
> that it is important to keep trying with the simplest ideas.
>
> So, for me a possible future for mailing lists would be to simply make
> face-to-face contact an integral part of their main "communication
> protocol".
>
> I don't know, a few people meeting more or less randomly and then making
> the habit to send a common e-mail to a list would be cool. Then a
> possible proposal for the future of nettime: Single e-mails forbidden!
> People should send to the list only if they are at least with one more
> person discussing live the content of their common e-mail.
>
> In any case, if we are serious about privacy, sovereignty, ecology, etc,
> we need less not more data, even if they "belong to the people".
>
> Instead of claiming for more private, secure, user-owned data I think we
> should actively question first data itself, and demand less connected
> things, less blockchain world savers, less online groups, etc.
>
> Anyway, I am happy that I finally sent my first e-mail to nettime
> without thinking too much about it :-)
>
> Best,
>
> Panos
> http://nethood.org/panayotis/
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Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Adrian McEwen]

Is the death of Make the rebirth of nettime? ;-)  Mostly joking, but 
given this has turned a few lurkers into posters (me included), maybe we 
just need some different topics to be discussing?


I'm enjoying the contributions (and nice to bump into some friends as 
fellow-lurkers!).  It's nice to see general agreement that maker culture 
isn't dead, and


Make did a lot to popularise making and it's a shame to see it go, 
especially for those whose livelihoods are caught in the fallout.  
However, I'm not too disappointed for another datapoint that the maker 
movement doesn't mesh well with the Californian Ideology of VCs, 
startups (and now "scaleups").


Maybe these conversations in the aftermath will help give oxygen to the 
people trying to work out what replaces capitalism (or 
capitalism-as-is); maybe we can help find the others building new 
commons, and new institutions to help us all.  As Garnet points out, 
many of those people/initiatives predate Make - my contributions started 
around the same time, but have always taken a different tack (although 
still business-friendly).


Tom, I try not to sit in my own maker enclave, although it's tricky to 
do when you're already balancing earning a living and bootstrapping a 
community of makers.  When we set up DoES Liverpool [1] we /did/ 
deliberately choose to encourage more businesses as well as the hobbyist 
or making-as-culture/art/fun/activist side of things; we figured that 
Liverpool didn't need another anarchist/left-wing group or meeting 
space, but did need more ways for people to make a living.  I don't 
normally frame the shared access to tools as collective ownership of the 
means of production, but it could be put that way...


There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that.


It's far from perfect, and there is much work still to do, but there are 
sub-groups looking at recycling and maintenance, and we're friends with 
other groups across the city (and further afield) similarly feeling 
their way to a better future - Homebaked Anfield's [2] community 
co-operative bakery and housing; Granby Four Streets [3] activist 
housing renewal; Little Sandbox's [4] education-focused makerspace 
camped out in part of the library in one of the city's poorer 
neighbourhoods...


I struggle to properly explain how and why such a disparate collection 
of activities hold as much promise and potential as I belive they do. 
Maybe there won't be a big behemoth success story that we can all point 
to and go "look at X, that shows the maker movement has worked", maybe 
instead there'll just be a multitude of people collaborating, making 
things for themselves and for others and for fun. (Rebecca Solnit's 
recent post seems useful in thinking about how we talk about that [5])


Cheers,

Adrian.

[1] https://doesliverpool.com

[2] http://homebaked.org.uk/

[3] https://www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk/history-of-the-four-streets

[4] https://littlesandbox.co.uk/

[5] https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-when-the-hero-is-the-problem/


On 12/06/2019 11:11, Tom Keene wrote:

I'd also like to add some thoughts here as a non-poster on Nettime.

I was recently contacted by some old friends, some of whom I haven't 
seen since I was 16 years old. These friends were part of London's 
early squat party scene. This scene was distinct from 'raves' heard so 
much about in the mainstream press, where the mantra of "free party 
faceless techno" reacted against the notion of superstar DJ's 
worshipped by dancers. Rather, DJ's and sound-makers tended to be 
dimly lit, out of view, and amongst the dancers.


The free party scene was born out of punk, black sound system culture, 
a DIY ethos, and the drug ecstasy. My friends learnt how to build 
sound systems and their own sound-making equipment. I shared my 
soldering skills my grandad had taught me while sitting on his knee. I 
also shared woodworking skills I gained from my dad and learnt from 
friends far more skilled than him. My friends understood generators 
used to power a rave, and the equipment of building sites because 
that's where their parents (and some of them) worked and continue to 
do so. Those that didn't understand electronics, helped move 
equipment, played records, painted banners, many of who attended art 
school and were from middle-class backgrounds. I didn't think much 
about class back then, or my own middle class background (which I 
often attempted to hide), but the free party scene was an important 
meeting point of different academic, class, and (to some extent) race 
backgrounds - anybody could afford to go to a free party and anybody 
could contribute.


I always found maker culture slightly strange when it gained 
prominence, it seems far removed from the maker culture of my then, 
predominantly working-class, friends 

Re: less (net time) is more

[Andreas Broeckmann]

panos, friends,

i like this idea, especially because it highlights what is valuable 
about many of the exchanges that include the conviviality of arguing. 
(once upon a time, in the later 1990s, there was a string of such 
meetings... [incl. big arguments about joint projects like the READ ME 
publication])


i also like how panos's proposal gives a mild hint that loneliness might 
be one of the ghosts that have haunted nettimers in the last months, or 
longer.


maybe instead of creating a strict rule ("no single-author e-mails"), 
panos's suggestion can be taken as an encouragement for all of us people 
before posting: to whom can i show this before it gets posted?


so, "ideally", any message would come from a relay-person, a mentor 
chosen by the author...


ok, i see the problems of such a system, but i like the feeling of being 
in this "convivial dream nettime" for a while... ;-)


regards,
-a


Am 11.06.19 um 23:03 schrieb panayotis antoniadis:


Dear all,

I have been following since a few years and tried many times to write
but for some reason never pressed the send button.

It is perhaps that I was always wanting to suggest somehow obvious,
simple things, which have been said before many times. But I do think
that it is important to keep trying with the simplest ideas.

So, for me a possible future for mailing lists would be to simply make
face-to-face contact an integral part of their main "communication
protocol".

I don't know, a few people meeting more or less randomly and then making
the habit to send a common e-mail to a list would be cool. Then a
possible proposal for the future of nettime: Single e-mails forbidden!
People should send to the list only if they are at least with one more
person discussing live the content of their common e-mail.

In any case, if we are serious about privacy, sovereignty, ecology, etc,
we need less not more data, even if they "belong to the people".

Instead of claiming for more private, secure, user-owned data I think we
should actively question first data itself, and demand less connected
things, less blockchain world savers, less online groups, etc.

Anyway, I am happy that I finally sent my first e-mail to nettime
without thinking too much about it :-)

Best,

Panos
http://nethood.org/panayotis/

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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[James Wallbank]

Fascinating to hear about personal engagement in Making, Graham!


I, too, have been personally, hands-on involved in Making since Access 
Space's turn towards digital manufacture, and the interface of the 
physical and the digital, since around 2010.



(For those of you who aren't aware of Access Space, it started as a "DIY 
Media Lab" which I and various friends who had accreted around 
"Redundant Technology Initiative" (lowtech.org) in 2000. It 
re-interpreted donated digital debris as resource, rebuilding computers, 
installing free operating systems, making them available to 
participants, and encouraging and supporting creative, self-directed 
projects.)



Part of the motivation behind Access Space was our hope that digital 
engagement and skills had the potential to empower. This proved to be 
the case in the early 2000s, and numerous time-rich participants engaged 
with Access Space, taught themselves and each other technological 
skills, and became web designers, graphic designers, technicians or even 
better-known artists. (Though whether "art" is, in the context of 
networked global capital, a viable or empowering career for a 
statistically significant proportion of its participants is, I suggest, 
in question.)



By 2010 we'd seen far less business incubation, and proportionately 
fewer participants able to self-teach to a level that it made a real 
difference to their life prospects or creative leverage. We saw that 
hardware and software skills devalued as pre-installed devices became 
cheaper, and that the digital realm was becoming dominated by global 
digital services, including social media, that, while they didn't do a 
great job, diverted the vast majority of potential digital design 
clients away from bespoke, local service providers.



In short, the window of opportunity suggested by the first phase of the 
graphical internet was closing. While, in 2000, speed-reading an HTML 
primer, combined with a little design flair, a few copywriting skills, 
and some sales confidence could make you a web designer in a month, in 
2010 this was no longer the case.



We concluded that when any new technology is introduced, there's a 
period of opportunity, before that technology has become fully adopted 
or systematised, in which the individual can get involved, and (in a 
short time, with a level of skill only one page ahead of their clients) 
can empower themselves, converting an interest into saleable skills, 
products or resources.



We've seen the same window open and close with blockchain (which I 
believe to be illusory, unproductive, and, in the end, simply gambling). 
A vanishingly few people made money though cryptocurrency trading, but 
now it's dominated by grinding Ponzi schemes, viral mining fiddles, or 
blockchain is being repurposed by multinationals. The moment of 
opportunity for the individual has passed.



At Access Space we saw Fab Lab or "Maker Technologies" as a more 
genuinely productive line of approach, and, even though many of the 
technologies had been around for a decade or more, saw that the window 
of opportunity had not yet closed. As technology requiring significant 
physical engagement and investment (you need to buy real-world machines 
and materials!) the timescale of its adoption and exploitation by 
capital would be far slower.



So at Access Space we raised money (thanks EU structural funds!) and 
bought a CNC, a Lasercutter, a 3D Printer, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, a 
digital embroidery machine... and set about a research partnership to 
explore the potentials of these technologies for creating local jobs and 
enterprises.



In the end, for those not in the highfalutin' and disconnected academic 
realm (sorry, researchers - you're my friends really!) a key element of 
whether a technology is empowering or not is "Can you get paid for using 
it?"



And "using it to engage and educate" doesn't count - actually using it 
to create product or paid-for service is key. In Access Space's 
particular case, we took the position that we didn't care about 
"industrial transformation", nor "increasing supply-chain efficiencies". 
We cared most about actual, tangible jobs in Sheffield, not abstract 
(however numerically significant) jobs in San Fransisco or Shenzen.



The research engaged with local makers, both individuals and startup 
enterprises, and concluded that the technology we looked at with most 
potential to generate local jobs and enterprise was lasercutting, and 
the one with the least potential was 3D Print. Even seven years later, 
we still agree.



This failure, it seems to me, to engage with the economics of making is 
exactly what's thus far marginalised the "Maker Movement". It's also 
true of the Fab Lab - while it's a powerful context for education, the 
economics of fabbing just don't work.



To give a simple example: one of the Fab Lab founding principals its to 
engage with a wide range of materials and processes, on a wide range of 
s

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[Tom Keene]

I'd also like to add some thoughts here as a non-poster on Nettime.

I was recently contacted by some old friends, some of whom I haven't seen since 
I was 16 years old. These friends were part of London's early squat party 
scene. This scene was distinct from 'raves' heard so much about in the 
mainstream press, where the mantra of "free party faceless techno" reacted 
against the notion of superstar DJ's worshipped by dancers. Rather, DJ's and 
sound-makers tended to be dimly lit, out of view, and amongst the dancers.

The free party scene was born out of punk, black sound system culture, a DIY 
ethos, and the drug ecstasy. My friends learnt how to build sound systems and 
their own sound-making equipment. I shared my soldering skills my grandad had 
taught me while sitting on his knee. I also shared woodworking skills I gained 
from my dad and learnt from friends far more skilled than him. My friends 
understood generators used to power a rave, and the equipment of building sites 
because that's where their parents (and some of them) worked and continue to do 
so. Those that didn't understand electronics, helped move equipment, played 
records, painted banners, many of who attended art school and were from 
middle-class backgrounds. I didn't think much about class back then, or my own 
middle class background (which I often attempted to hide), but the free party 
scene was an important meeting point of different academic, class, and (to some 
extent) race backgrounds - anybody could afford to go to a free party and 
anybody could contribute. 

I always found maker culture slightly strange when it gained prominence, it 
seems far removed from the maker culture of my then, predominantly 
working-class, friends who put so much effort and gained so much expertise from 
their/our culture of making. Maker culture seemed to have lost its memory of 
earlier times. I'm reminded of a recent Keynote made Dr Johan Soderberg at a 
conference in the University of Nicosia in Cyprus which has a burgeoning 
maker/hacker culture in country dived by war. Johan quoted the socialist arts 
and crafts activist William Morris (1834-1896) "workers continue under a 
different name" to discuss how struggles are re-named to become something else. 
He suggested swapping the word 'worker' with 'hacker' or 'maker' to highlight 
how re-naming can erase the collective memory of a struggle. 

I think maker culture needs to re-connect with earlier struggles. The DIY 
culture of free parties connected to the squatter movement, housing struggles, 
road protests, women rights, globalism, and the Liverpool dockers. It 
politicised youngsters like me. The maker movement seems very distant from 
political struggles these days. Perhaps I am just starting to show my age, 
nostalgia for times past, or simply don't get out enough because of my young 
kids. However, last night I attended a residents association meeting on a 
housing estate in north London that faces demolition. I live on a housing 
estate that faces a similar fate. I undertake my research, making, theorising, 
and activism where I live because it connects with a tangible struggle. Let's 
ask why maker spaces (or should we rename them) don't tend to exist in such 
environments and what they lose by remaining in their own enclave?

Tom K 


On Tue, 11 Jun 2019, at 6:45 PM, Graham Harwood wrote:
> 

> I just want to interject a little into the Post-Maker universe. 

> 

> I work a lot these days with the maritime, a technical culture of wooden boat 
> repair that in Essex, I also worked a lot with people who restore old 
> telephone exchanges and people who build steam engines - through having run a 
> free media space in 00 ties were we hacked, pirated recycled at will. Among 
> the many things that are interesting about these technical cultures is that 
> they produce value for those engaged in the process - but this value has only 
> a limited relation to the accumulation of capital. The maker phenomena could 
> be seen in this context as a way to monetise the non-discursive technical 
> cultures - a tinkering world that has an unbroken line back to at least the 
> enlightenment but probably before. In 1799 the *Royal Institution of Great 
> Britain* was established to put science to work for particular class and keep 
> the theoretical away from a populace that presented a threat (the demon of 
> the French revolution) - The Royal Institution was a place where an artisan 
> class built technicals object but where not allowed in, or allowed to 
> lecture. Faraday had to have elocution lessons, learn how to eat properly 
> before being allowed to lecture and even then had to be deemed a genius to 
> escape the his class background and address gentleman. What Im trying to 
> suggest is that non-discursive technical tinkering exist within many 
> technical cultures and long may it remain so. 

> 

> I'll tag on a little introduction this I wrote. 

> 

> 

> “The science which compels