Founded on behalf of my dear friend Rafael Valim, a true designer who could always find the good within every aspect of his life. His way of life a reminder that we should focus on growth rather than decay; birth instead of death-- and invention rather than intimidation. The maker movement isn’t about robots or 3D Printing or STEM or even building things. It’s a new Renaissance, post-industrial, t
hat is led by each person and every person being fluent with the idea of meaning making, ethics, politics of technology, and conscientization—a Freirian term for the act of learning to see both the invisible box you are oppressed inside of and the doors you can carve to exit the box. It's an awakening as in Thoreau's concept of living life “awake" vs. “sleepwalking." Hands on project-based learning is a primary example of the reawakening process in action. It is like a school that doesn’t have textbooks going back to primary sources, only reading actual authors. But there is a source even more immediate: conversation with material itself. Through projects, we are probing human psychology and social reality directly with action and experimentation. The creation of physical artifacts is making, but it is only the most concrete expression of that which is more important: making of meaning. It’s about the meaning we can make. Makers are making meaning, which has a reified representation in each person’s network of neurons which I might call “worldview." By acting on the world, we act on our view of the world. We reform ourselves by reforming our environment. This is humanity. This rebirth allows not just the sharing of scientific information but also the instantaneous iteration upon any experiment by anyone connected with the Internet. The low cost to entry allows not just for consensus but also for something I’ll call “divercensus:” a divergent fabric of complex agreements. With divercensus, differences are not just acknowledged; the strength of multiple representations of truth is celebrated as being even more true. Making is about making our world, all together, a direct superdemocracy of creation without permission.
