Shapeways : 2011 in Review, and What’s to Come
The rapidly growing Shapeways community - comprised of designers, makers, hackers, enthusiasts and shoppers - demonstrates that “creative commerce” and the widespread demand for personalized products are rapidly on the rise.
Full Story and Prezi Presentation: Shapeways
Eugenia Morpurgo - RIY (Repair It Yourself)
The activity of repairing is a form of re-appropriating control on our material world, allowing us to understand how things function and acting as a key tool for the consumer to control his post-consumption goods (waste). Shoes are one of those products that, with the rise of consumerism and mass production, evolved drastically from a completely repairable object; and the active social-economical structure that existed around shoe repair is slowly disappearing.(via PSFK)
Whether through the mainstreaming of bespoke and DIY culture, with things like the Maker Faire in the United States and elsewhere, or the emergence of that mad and wonderful reimagining of the Victorian era “steampunk”, or the growing community on Etsy.com or just the continued persistence of user-generated content, my sense is that having a voice has never been more important.
We want to be creators, not consumers.
Sally Applin - AnthroPunk: Meta Making, Culture Making, and the “Making” of Making
Individual people collectively make the world around them, not only from the materials and ideas available to them but from new materials and ideas they construct. There are limits imposed by materials, but the application of ideas constantly transforms these into new possibilities, and new limits.
Sally Applin’s talk at Maker Faire (via Fora.tv, boingboing)
