What is the Maker Manifesto? Part 1: Make, Share, Give

Thursday, August 17, 2017

What is the Maker Manifesto? Part 1: Make, Share, Give


Description

The Maker Movement Manifesto is a book that Harley recently ran across that presents 9 points important to makers and the maker movement. In this episode of Maker Musings on the House of Hacks, Harley gives his first impressions of the first three points in the manifesto: Make, Share, Give.

The Maker Manifesto by Mark Hatch (Affiliate link)

Sample chapter (PDF)

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For a written transcript, go to What is the Maker Manifesto? (Part 1)

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com

Transcript

Today at the House of Hacks we're going to finish up the Maker Musings series for August with the first of three videos talking about the Maker Manifesto.

[Intro]

Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.

Today I want to start a three part series on the Maker Manifesto. This is a book I recently came across by Mark Hatch. In full disclosure I haven't read the book. I've read a synopsis of the book and I've read a sample chapter of the book and it does sound kind of interesting. I have put it on my reading list to go ahead and read the whole thing. The sample chapter was pretty well written and had some interesting points to make. So I do want to read the book.

But I do want to go over the nine points that he's identified as the manifesto for makers. His perspective is from a makers space perspective. He's heavily influenced and involved in the maker space movement and this is the manifesto he's put together specifically for that environment.

I want to go through it. It had some interesting points. The next three days, there's nine points in total, for three days I want to go over three points each day and just kind of talk about them and give a first impression as I read it. He also had a synopsis for each word and I want to go over those just so you have a definition for what he's talking about and if it sounds interesting to you.

If you have any comments, any reactions to anything I say or anything he says, leave them in the comments below. I'd love to hear them and have a discussion about it.

The first three points are: Make, Share and Give.

Make says: Making is fundamental to what it means to be human. We must make, create and express ourselves to feel whole. There is something unique about making physical things. These things are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our souls.

Now this is kind of interesting. I'm not quite sure what he means about that first sentence where he's talking about "making is fundamental to what it means to be human." I'm going to interpret that from my perspective. I talked about this a little bit last week where I talked about "why make" and how I believe that we're made in God's image and God is a creative God and He's put a portion of His creativity in each one of us. I would say that making doesn't make us human. It's not the act of making that makes us human. But rather it's the fact that we're human and we make. We make because we're human, not we make to make us human. If that makes sense. That's kind of a subtle distinction but one that I think is kind of important from my belief system because of how I believe that God did create us in His image.

The next word is Share and the definition he has for that is: Sharing what you have made and what you know about making with others is the method by which a maker's feeling of wholeness is achieved. You cannot make and not share.

Now this is kind of interesting because it's a large part of why I started House of Hacks. A lot of people have poured into my life in educating me and encouraging me and inspiring me and I want to do the same thing to inspire, educate and encourage others. So this channel is one of the ways I want to do that. I really agree with sharing is something that I think is important for us as makers to do.

Give: There are few things more selfless and satisfying than giving away something you have made. The act of making puts a small piece of you in the object. Giving that to someone else is like giving someone a small piece of yourself. Such things are often the most cherished items we possess.

Now this is interesting because give and share are closely related. He makes the statement that "the act of making puts a small piece of you in the object." To some degree I agree with this in that who we are as humans I think kind of is manifest or revealed by what we make.

Again going back to God and creation. We look around and see so much beauty and intricacy in creation, I think a lot of that is, or all of that, is because God is an intricate and creative God and His substance is manifest... It's not that the making is Him, but rather that because He is beautiful, because He is intricate, He therefore makes beautiful and intricate things.

I think the same thing holds true for us. If we look at art, I think part of our emotion, part of our soul, is revealed through what we make, whether it's art or other objects. A lot of it comes from design I think in the whole how we make things.

Those are the first three items in the Maker Manifesto: Make, Share and Give. I'd love to hear your comments down below if you have any reactions to what I've said or what he says, or if you've heard of this before, that'd be interesting. I just ran across this a few weeks ago.

So that's it for today. Until next time, go make something.

Perfection's not required. Fun is!