All posts tagged makers

Ruskin on Privileging Certain Forms of Imagination

In his 1857 lecture on “Influence of Imagination in Architecture” to members of the Architectural Association, John Ruskin noted:

If we see an old woman spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexterously from the distaff, we respect her for her manipulation — if we ask her how much she expects to make in a year, and she answers quickly, we respect her for her calculation — if she is watching at the same time that none of her grandchildren fall into the fire, we respect her for her observation — yet for all this she may still be a commonplace old woman enough. But if she is all the time telling a fairy tale out of her head, we praise her for her imagination, and say, she must be a rather remarkable old woman.

From The Two Paths (George Allen edition of 1906), page 136.

608 days ago /  Tagged: , 0

Agricultural Equivalents

In an episode of Modern Marvels on the History channel, the history of agricultural labor was delineated as follows:

  • With a sickle, one man could harvest one acre of land a day. This remained the standard from the time of the Egyptians until the sixteenth century when the scythe was invented in what is now modern day Germany.
  • With a scythe, one many could harvest three acres of wheat a day.
  • With the McCormick reaper, a farmer could harvest twelve acres in a day.
656 days ago /  Tagged: , , 0

Corporatizing the Maker “Movement”

The New York Times has a story on-line about TechShop, a company looking to build, some might say capitalize, on the maker movement. Another way to look at it is that a private company is willing to do what communities used to do for themselves, but forgot: provide a communal space that anyone can use. Once upon a time, almost every town had a community kitchen, where anyone with a big cooking job, typically canning fruits and vegetables, could go. Or many people could go and socialize while working. When I lived in Bloomington, there was a community wood shop where for a few dollars, you could use a decent collection of decent tools.

TechShop aims to replicate that experience, but using a membership model, where individuals pay a monthly fee in order to have access to what appears to be a nice collection of machinery. Who knows, if this catches on we might see communities once again creating this infrastructure as a way to accommodate those who can’t afford memberships in the private sector. Anything that makes making itself more accessible, more palatable, more approachable, and especially more doable is just fine by me.

663 days ago /  Tagged: , 0