Headline Sep 07, 2014

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As for online communities, Arduino has an active forum on its website, while MakerBot runs a website called Thingiverse, which lets people share 3D designs.

YouTube and other video sharing sites offer how-to clips for almost everything.

On instructables,  users post and discuss recipes to make and do all kinds of things. And then there is Etsy, an online market place for handmade goods, from hand knitted scarves to  3D  printed jewellery.

The ease with which designs for physical things can be shared digitally goes a long way forward in explaining why the  maker  movement has already developed a strong culture   -its third driver.

''If you are not sharing your designs, you are doing it wrong," says Bre Pettis, the chief executive of MakerBot. Physical space and tools are being shared,too, in the form of common workshops.

Some 400 such  ''hacker spaces''  already operate worldwide, according to Hackerspaces.org. Many are organised like artists' collectives.

At Noisebridge, a hacker space in San Francisco, even non-members can come and tinker  -as long as they comply with the group's main rule : to be  ''excellent''  to each other.

''The Internet is no substitute for a real community.'' says Mitch Altman, a co-founder of Noisebridge.

This sort of thing makes the maker movement sound a lot like the digital equivalent of quilting bees. But it has already had a wider impact, mainly in schools in America.

Many have discovered  3D  printers and Arduino boards  -and are using them to make science and technology classes more hands on again, and teach students to be producers as well users of digital products.

All this will boost innovation, predicts Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make magazine, a central organ of the maker movement. Its tool and culture promote experimentation, collaboration, and rapid improvement.

Makers can play in niches that big firms ignore  -though they are watching the maker movement and will borrow ideas from it., Mr Dougherty believes. The Maker Faire in New York was sponsored by technology companies:

Including HP and Cognizant. And,   Autodesk which makes computer aided design software, bought Instructables a year ago.  

Firms may also copy some of the unusual business models that makers, often accidental entrepreneurs, have come up with.

Arduino lets other firms copy its designs. for example, but charges them to use its logo.

Quirk's an industrial design firm based in New York City, uses crowd sourcing to decide which products to make. MakieLab of London is developing a platform:

To allow toyshops or individuals or individuals to develop customised toys and have them printed. Venture capitalists are nosing around the field.

In recent months Quirky raised $16m. MakerBot raised $10m and Shapeways, a firm that offers a  3D  printing service , received  $5m.

The parallel  with the  lobbyist  computer movement of the  1970s  is striking. In both cases enthusiastic tinkerers, many on America's West Coast, began playing with new technologies that had huge potential to disrupt business and society.

Back then, the machines manipulated bits : now the action is in atoms. 

This has prompted predictions of new industrial revolution, in which more manufacturing is done by small firms or even by individuals.

''The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit." writes Chris Anderson, the editor of  Wired magazine.

It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with  3D  printers will change the world.

But the original  industrial revolution  grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the  1970s.

The maker movement is not only worth a watch but extremely worth participating for all the students of the world.     

Thank you all for reading! 

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

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Good Night and God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless