Today – June 18th 2014 – has been declared the first-ever National Day of Making. However, the maker movement has been growing for some time now, and will continue to make huge strides in the months to come. In September 2014, tens of thousands of tinkerers and inventors, artisans and civic hackers, will gather at the Maker Faire in New York for what has been described as the “greatest show and tell on earth.” Brooklyn is the heart of the maker movement, and New York more broadly has long been a primary gathering spot for makers. Now, all across the country, these grassroots innovators are transforming the manufacturing model for the 21st century to bring jobs back home and provide sustainable economic opportunity.
The maker movement is democratizing not only manufacturing, but also capability more broadly. It flattens the supply chain by empowering each maker with a broader range of productive capabilities. In a very real sense, the movement represents a return to craftsmanship. In previous generations, makers were constrained by a lack of technology to serve as jacks-of-all-trades in making their goods. Now, by contrast, it is technological innovation – computer aided design, social networking, 3D printing – that enables makers, acting as generalists, and with the support of services such as Shapeways and tools such as the MakerBot, to produce goods that without such technology would require a broad range of specialized skills beyond the capacity of one individual or even a small group of individuals.
In the words of Chris Anderson, maker movement evangelist and former editor-in-chief of Wired, “There is really nothing standing in the way between an idea and the realization of that idea and then a company around that idea and then a community around that company.” Thanks to a collaborative and inquisitive spirit, as well as the technologies underlying the movement, everybody can have a factory.” Anderson contextualizes this phenomenon as the third global revolution succeeding the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century and the Digital Revolution of the late 20th century, whose signatures were the personal computer and the internet. While the digital Revolution democratized the process of “creation” and “distribution” of information, the maker movement and the technologies that drive it have a similar democratizing effect on manufacturing. Put another way: Just as the internet distributes information, so does the maker movement distribute capability.
Recognizing the economic and social value in the maker movement, governments in the US and abroad are supporting grassroots innovators with new programs, recognition, and funding. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has recognized movement luminary Dale Doherty as a Champion of Change and is hosting its first-ever Maker Faire today. And in the movement’s spirit of distribution and diffusion, OSTP has announced a locally-focused initiative, the Mayors Maker Challenge to encourage making in communities from Brooklyn to Venice Beach. It is important to understand this is not solely an American phenomenon; the Chinese government has provided funding to fuel its own growing maker movement, for example.
Microsoft both embodies the maker ethos and supports the movement’s potential. Just as the Windows operating system spearheaded the rise of the personal computer in the Digital Revolution of the late 20th century, today we are committed to the new revolution, this time taking place in manufacturing. That is why we launched The Garage, a maker space at our worldwide headquarters in Redmond, WA. The key role of Microsoft can be found outside our walls, as well – in the innovation taking place in schools we support, and in the smart utilization of Xbox Kinect to affordably scan and digitize 3D objects, for instance. In addition to working with long-established maker spaces such as New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and newer ones such as the Columbia MakerSpace, Microsoft is excited to directly collaborate with those leveraging Kinect and other accessible tools as they become, as President Obama put it, “makers of things, not just consumers of things.”
Powered by new technologies such as 3D printing, the value of tinkering, toying, and hacking at the movement’s core appeals to people of diverse backgrounds, young and old, women and men. The maker movement is truly a grassroots phenomenon, something at once personal, communal, and nationwide. Like the productivity of the digital revolution before it, the maker movement contains the seeds of a future in which jobs, creativity and a new kind of scalable individuality can become the standard. Microsoft looks forward to taking part in this journey, because our mission is to empower people and organizations to do more, to be more, and to make more.
