DIYers Reviving Innovation
Posted on March 5, 2008 - Filed Under Techie, Consumerism, DIY |
I love the idea of being able to build and fix things all by myself. Knowing the difference between the tools I inherited from my father, and knowing when to use them is something I want to learn.
In high school about 15 years ago (yikes!), I was placed in a shop class for 4th period because the honors history class I had wanted to take was full. So it was just me, the only girl, and 10 very country boys and the stereotypical shop teacher with missing fingers. I couldn’t believe it; shop teachers really do have missing fingers! So during the few months I was in shop class we made lots of things out of wood, some things out of metal, and a very special group of students made many things to store pot and to smoke pot. All in all it was very enlightening and gave me the confidence to work with tools.
Fast forward to going to college and working in an office and, all of a sudden, I am replacing anything in my house that breaks instead of trying to fix it first. I want to be a do-it-yourself kind of gal. I want to be the DIYer that doesn’t need to be a part of the consumer chain because I can fix things on my own.
An article in Wired recently delved into this idea that America used to be full of DIYers saying that “Only a few decades ago, most serious adults were expected to be fluent in basic mechanics. If your car or stove or radio broke down, you opened it up and fixed it.” I do realize though, many of our household items are so full of microchips and wires that fixing many appliances isn’t possible, right?
I’ve realized that the further away my life physically moves from creating or being a part of the necessities one needs for life (clothing, food, toiletries), that I am mentally moving away from the knowledge about what it takes to make your own necessities. Maybe this is the reason America is so enamored with DIY shows right now like Dirty Jobs, How It’s Made, and anything on HGTV. Last week I saw an episode on Dirty Jobs about how cranberries are raised and harvested causing my declaration to my husband that I now want to be a cranberry farmer! So maybe I won’t be a cranberry farmer, but I bet I could at least start my own garden and go from there.
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3 Responses to “DIYers Reviving Innovation”
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Nice post!
Cool post. Nice connection to anticonsumerism…wish i could work on the electronics in my home though; i’ll have to settle for fixing the furniture.
I was talking with a professor of mechanical engineering recently, who said “we used to get all these farm kids, who could tell if a fence pole was straight, and could make things with bailing wire and epoxy. They’re all gone, all the new students are from the joystick era, and don’t have a sense of how things work.”
He went on to rue what that might mean, in terms of the mental models of the next generation of engineers.
On the local scale, there’s a lot of satisfaction in opening up a toaster, and figuring out why it’s no longer working (”say, that connection’s corroded! Maybe that’s the problem”) — good to hear you’re not scared to go there.