Tuesday, May 17, 2005
The Amazing Rise of the Do-It-Yourself Economy
Oh, and instead of working from a corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif., with nearly 12,000 employees, Misterovich is a stay-at-home dad, creating his Pez MP3 player from the basement of his Springfield, Mo., home.
...Instead, they’re simply finding a way—in this mass-produced, Wal-Mart world—to take power back, prove that they can make the products that they want to consume, have fun doing so, and, just maybe, make a few dollars.
..."Before, only the rich had access to tools and so only the rich were professionals, and the rest were amateurs," says Noah Glass, the co-founder of Odeo, which offers a free service for making, hosting, and distributing podcasts. "But now, as the creation tools have become easier to use and more freely distributed through open source, through the Internet, through awareness, more people have more access to more tools, so the whole amateur-professional dichotomy is dissolving."
...The infrastructure is there: Yahoo Groups make it easier for people to trade ideas and learn quickly; free or cheap computer-aided-design (CAD) programs allow users to cobble together blueprints; and inexpensive manufacturing in China allows the idea to go from file to factory. There are even websites like Alibaba.com that will help these small-timers find Chinese factories eager for their work, meaning that the amateur nation has its own Match.com.
...Do-it-yourselfers of all stripes will be able to go to the site to trade ideas and work together, get easy access to programs for manipulating materials, and eventually use it to pool their resources for buying raw materials from suppliers.
...Microsoft is also talking about working with things like Phidgets, inexpensive, easily manipulated electronic parts like RFID components—a radio chip expected to supplant the bar code—that would allow you to, say, make your own keyless home-entry system.... Brian Keller, product manager for Visual Studio, says he looks forward to the day when "my mom can sit down and watch a video and learn how to build an RFID reader for herself."
...It features page after page of geeked-out—but not unachievable—how-tos; the latest issue details the finer points of crafting your own printed circuitboard or building your own teleprompter (anticipating the inevitable rise of video blogging).
Fortune
...Instead, they’re simply finding a way—in this mass-produced, Wal-Mart world—to take power back, prove that they can make the products that they want to consume, have fun doing so, and, just maybe, make a few dollars.
..."Before, only the rich had access to tools and so only the rich were professionals, and the rest were amateurs," says Noah Glass, the co-founder of Odeo, which offers a free service for making, hosting, and distributing podcasts. "But now, as the creation tools have become easier to use and more freely distributed through open source, through the Internet, through awareness, more people have more access to more tools, so the whole amateur-professional dichotomy is dissolving."
...The infrastructure is there: Yahoo Groups make it easier for people to trade ideas and learn quickly; free or cheap computer-aided-design (CAD) programs allow users to cobble together blueprints; and inexpensive manufacturing in China allows the idea to go from file to factory. There are even websites like Alibaba.com that will help these small-timers find Chinese factories eager for their work, meaning that the amateur nation has its own Match.com.
...Do-it-yourselfers of all stripes will be able to go to the site to trade ideas and work together, get easy access to programs for manipulating materials, and eventually use it to pool their resources for buying raw materials from suppliers.
...Microsoft is also talking about working with things like Phidgets, inexpensive, easily manipulated electronic parts like RFID components—a radio chip expected to supplant the bar code—that would allow you to, say, make your own keyless home-entry system.... Brian Keller, product manager for Visual Studio, says he looks forward to the day when "my mom can sit down and watch a video and learn how to build an RFID reader for herself."
...It features page after page of geeked-out—but not unachievable—how-tos; the latest issue details the finer points of crafting your own printed circuitboard or building your own teleprompter (anticipating the inevitable rise of video blogging).
Fortune
# posted by Lynn Wegley @ 5:07 PM 
