Makers at Work: Folks Reinventing the World One Object or Idea at a Time

Foreword

During the past few years, a remarkable phenomenon—the Maker Movement—has emerged. For two decades, humans have been immersed in creating new things based on bits. The Internet has woven itself into the fabric of everything we do. The radical evolution of how humans and computers interact has been profound, and as we get closer to a world where humans and machines are intrinsically linked, our minds—and innovative energy—has started to shift back to the physical world.

I’m 47. When I was in high school over 30 years ago, we had three “labs”—shop class, home economics, and a computer lab. Shop class was a function of the industrial revolution—an effort to teach teenagers how to use the tools in our parents’ garages to make things. Home ...