Maker Faire Post #1: The Importance of Innovation

We traveled to Austin, TX to see Makers do their thing at the Maker Faire. For those who don’t know about Makers, Make magazine or the DIY revolution, you should certainly find out more about it! Tim O’Reilly, who is generally good at spotting trends early, latched on to this one a couple of years ago. He started Make Magazine to give these budding DIY’ers their own platform. In the 2 1/2 years since its inception, Make Magazine has become wildly popular. They’ve held annual “Faires” in California (2005, 2006) and this one was the first held outside the Bay Area. Thankfully they chose Austin, because it was easy for me to get to!

One of the things that has always struck me as a huge difference between society in the US and Pakistan, is that the notion of getting something done yourself is so hugely prevalent and important in the former, while it is mostly looked down upon in the latter. So deeply ingrained is the “baboo” mentality in most white collar Pakistanis that having to do anything with their own hands is looked upon as serious trauma. Ask developers in a local software company to clean their own desk areas, or move chairs and tables around and you will witness the joy of life wiped completely off their faces. When that happens, I’ve already explained how to handle the fallout… But, I suppose in a developing country manual labour is equated neither to drive nor skill, but to poverty. And folks trying to climb the social ladder don’t want to be reminded about where they’re coming from. Nonetheless, this is a serious problem, and actually, an impediment to innovation.

So I look at the Maker Faire as the ultimate manifestation of the extent to which Innovation and “Doing it Yourself” is embedded in the American psyche. One could go off on long tangents as to why this is so, and talk about how hard labour was necessary to explore the west and carve out a life for oneself in what was otherwise hostile wilderness. The early settlers prospered only by being inventive and putting in hard work (and yes, also by wiping out the Native American population through a variety of evil means, but I don’t want to change the subject quite at this moment). Many years ago, I saw a collection of different barbed wire designs and the title on the display was “The invention that tamed Texas”. The idea here, of course, was that walls and other forms of construction were impossible when labour was so hard to come by, population densities were so low, and frankly, the raw materials were a problem on their own. Barbed wire was an effective replacement to hard physical walls and allowed ranchers to raise large numbers of cattle without the cost of having to build solid walls. A simple idea like that allowed Texas settlers to prosper and to become rich enough to revolt against Mexico, conduct a separatist movement and to take over the entire state as their own!

While I am not suggesting inventions should have motives such as the above, the point is that the mindset of innovation in any society can allow it to change the rules of the game very drastically. What if there was clean drinking water available to everyone in the country? What if there was power and electricity available in abundance to everyone in the country? What if a way was found to instantly communicate acts of corruption, or wadera-inflicted-violence or other such violations of citizens’ rights and put them on youtube? What if access to wealth for the majority of our population, was not tied to access to land – allowing them to make money and become economically independent without having to pay large lumpsums of money for land… something they will never be able to do? What if fabrication of pretty much anything, became instant and didn’t require large industries to be put up?

These are all things that could change our society and country in a very positive way. They would be huge disruptors that would alter the status quo immensely. A small tiny taste of this has been pretty obvious in Pakistan in the form of the Telecom revolution and media liberalization. The government, nor the opposition, can hope to do much at a macro level which remains hidden from citizens’ eyes. Communications through inexpensive cell phones have opened up economic opportunities for many. But this is not even the tip of the iceberg. These innovations have not yet affected or changed the core set of ills that plague our society; lack of education, absence of empowerment, lack of awareness, impediments to justice etc. While not all of these issues are linked to innovation, technology can be an aid and a disruptor that changes the rules of the game, making it hard for social injustice to survive at a large scale. Tehelka.com was just the beginning of this phenomenon.

So, I suppose you’re wondering, what does this have to do with the Maker Faire? Well, a lot. Since the whole philosophy behind DIY’ing and a love of innovation is what is at the heart of this post. I promise to share a lot more about what actually happened at the Faire in subsequent posts. Don’t get put off by the philosophical rant and Stay Tuned!