Maker Faire 2017 and The Imagination Age
Going into Maker Faire I didn’t really expect anything new since I went the past two years, but this year was different in a very different way. Maker faire is the “Greatest Show (& Tell) on Earth”, so Let me show you!
Notes
Talks — There were some talks at Maker Faire and they were focused on anything that goes into making basically
Areas: These are geographical areas the Faire is divided into - It represents various kinds of sectors Ex: drones, robots, young makers, etc.
Innovation in the Maker Movement
Grant Imahara
Grant Imahara talked about in essence what the Maker Movement is all about. The one point that really stood out to me was that “life is just a series prototypes”. There were several main themes brought up: rapid prototyping, sharing, and failing. The “internet and sharing is what make the movement happen”. Pretty interesting because a lot of hackathons are going open source. Finally Grant Imahara expressed one of his biggest takeaways from Myth Busters: this idea of embracing failure as a part of the process. Very much true as everyone fails in their life, but in reality it’s how you choose to look at failure. In Grant Imahara’s mind it’s how you react to it and get back on your feet.
Areas 5–6–8
These areas really focused on robotics, startups, and applications. Interestingly a lot of these applications are focused on the green sector.
Area 3
Basically a light party full of lights galore:
Digital Art Makes Relationships Among People.
Masakazu TAKASU
This talk was basically a synthesis of how art and science can come together to create radically new and appealing digital experiences. The science helps us understand the world creating a system to organize and theorize the universe. The art on the other hand helps expression through beauty and emotion. “Art and science can upgrade the world, and commonsense of human being”. I’d highly suggest looking at their exhibits. Here’s their website:
Critical Making: Curriculum in Art, Design, Engineering, and Culture at UC Berkeley
Eric Paulos
I really liked the unconventional processes brought by this talk, and it’s my personal favorite. In summary this talk was on Critical Making a class at UC Berkeley that really took the concept of problem making to design rather problem finding. Eric Paulos the associate professor along with his panel of students talked about the unconventional artifacts created from this program. Like this!:
Me and my mom thought the protest project Light The Way was something that was inventive and increasingly important. Also the Uberick was pretty rad!
I thought the blurb on the site was too good to paraphrase so here it is:
“Critical Making will operationalize and critique the practice of “making” through both foundational literature and hands on studio culture. As hybrid practitioners, students will develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice. With design research as a lens, students will envision and create future computational experiences that critically explore social and culturally relevant technological themes such as community, privacy, environment, education, economics, energy, food, biology, democracy, activism, healthcare, social justice, etc.”
Area 2
I see two huge trends at Maker Faire. The first being digital fabrication, which is what Area 2 is all about. Digital fabrication technologies are more on the hardware side of things. 3D printing and electronics are two of the biggest focuses in this area and Make. I think there’s this consensus among industry and institutional leaders that the amount of time that it takes from a design sketch to physical production is quickly diminishing as time progresses. The second huge trend robotics and automation is huge in terms of its effect on humanity. If for one thing till today nothing came to the standard of human intelligence, but that’s changing quickly. If there is one thing I’d note is this symbiosis between the biological world and technology. I’ll save the rest of my I, Robot/Enthiran/AI talk for later.
Human Experience, Design, and the Maker Process
Jeremy Ashley
Jeremy Ashley mainly talked about the humanism in design. His talk was a short 15 minutes because as he put it interestingly there’s this trend of core simple idea in anything can brought down to simple statement. Humanism, a focus on the human being, is important because to design is to understand the self motivation how a human is going to experience. Personal computing is changing the world immensely. I even read in a book that break through technology can have a bigger impact than a president can have in their presidency. :D
Area 10
This Area is for young Makers, and my old high school Irvington had one of the best booths in Area 10. I’m so thankful that my 9th grade intro to technology teacher and Robotics Club advisor Mrs. Berbawy brought us here the past two years. It’s so inspiring to see what people make. Thank you Mrs. Berbawy!
So I leave you with this take on JFK’s famous quote:
ask not how can we consume with technology — ask how can we create with technology
We are at the dawn of a new age the Imagination Age.
;)
HATERS ARE Going TO HATE CREATORS ARE Going to CREATE — Retweeted by Casey Neistat
