Maker 2.0

My first thoughts on this book were more toward a series of essays. Between Christi’s influence and Sebastian’s needs, my thoughts have shifted heavily toward making a book more primarily targeted at a younger audience. Nevertheless, as I let it sit, the need to cover both kids and adults needing an introduction to Making hasn’t gone away. These Maker 2.0 topics as we imagine what the new Maker community will look like are incredibly important for all people to know about. Also, hands-on learning is critical to build real understanding.

A collected essay book can indeed be powerful, as P2P was for me, but a broader-focus style, like the Getting Started in TRS-80 BASIC, or some say the Dummie’s books, should help more people get introduced to the important thoughts. Further, none of these would give the historical answers to why people have created the math and science we use today to make. I might still want to reach out to my industry friends for some of these essays as further-reading topics and take quotes and key ideas out of them for this Make Things book. To that end, I’m capturing this e-mail I wrote to Andy and sent to editors at O’Reilly. I never even got Andy’s e-mail address, to it is unlikely he ever saw it.

Letter to Andy Orem

Subject: Maker 2.0 (in the style of P2P: Harnessing the power of disruptive technologies)

Andy,

I believe there is an important narrative waiting to be told. 20 years ago, your curated book on peer-to-peer changed my life. I’ve even had the pleasure of meeting folks like Dan Bricklin and Clay Shirky, but, more fundamentally, it changed how I looked at individuals’ and small groups’ ability to impact the direction of technology. It influenced my decision to make BeagleBoard which had a significant role in shifting embedded computing solutions, including the Raspberry Pi.

My vision of people having cheap, dedicated computers in their home where they could leverage a community of developers to host their own services and not be dependent on large external providers was not realized. The walled gardens won.

Like many innovations in technology, proprietary innovation in the short term can be a good thing, as long as we don’t loose site on the long vision. Distributed and democratized information technology and automation still has a chance.

Cooperation between large corporate interests and individual zealots is driving the next wave of disruption. There is greater realization than ever that both play critical roles in technology disruption. Call it innovators dilemma if you want, but it is also very much about the new information economy that limits access to all but the most extreme views.

Anyway, let me know if you have enough interest for me to expand on this idea. Working with someone like yourself seems critical to realize such a book.

Some potential topics for essays:

  • Linux

  • RISC-V and OpenHW

  • Personal manufacturing

  • Makerspaces

  • Personal medical and biotech

  • P2P file sharing

  • Mastodon

  • Freedombox

  • AI

  • Raspberry Pi

  • Open Harware

Regards,

Jason