The San Francisco Bay Area is notorious for being full of people who have interesting ideas and, what’s more, are prone to act on them. Creativity is the lifeblood of the Bay Area not just in the sense that it provides jobs and income, but that it is something that seems to infuse the very matter that makes up this area. It’s hard to describe without slipping into some form of New Age mumbo-jumbo, and this mojo of brilliance is not uniformly distributed, to be sure. But if you are one of those unfortunate souls who experiences pain at the contemplation of a new idea, the Bay Area can be a frustrating place to live. And if you go anywhere near the San Mateo Fairgrounds when the Makers strut their stuff, your head will probably explode.

A bb-shooting scratchbuilt 1/144 scale model warship, opened to show its inside components.

This year’s fair was bigger and better than last year’s. Attendance was huge, and diverse. I was struck by how many parents brought kids along–probably a good idea to get young minds used to the culture of creativity and inventiveness. There were plenty of middle aged types, along with the young and restless in off-beat clothes and more than the usual number of tattoos.

For those of you who do not know what Maker Faire is, this is an event sponsored by Make magazine, a publication for people who like to play with technology in ways that often go against what is corporately correct. They gleefully modify products, void warranties, create add-ons, and basically give a collective finger to companies and cultures who insist that we play nice with technology and just let the faceless corporate engineers and marketing departments tell us what our tech should be, how much we should pay for it, and the hundred and one reasons why, even when our check has cleared, they insist that it isn’t really ours to play with, hack, modify, and break if we so choose. They also blow a group raspberry at the schoolmarms and Nervous Nellies among us that we not run with scissors, “do try this at home” or try anything that looks even remotely dangerous.

Imposing sculpture built from pieces of scrap.

What could one see at this year’s faire? Fighting robots. Radio controlled bb-shooting model warships that literally sink each other. Experimental aircraft. Laser harp. Chakratron. More robots. Computer controlled shop tools. Sign-ups for lessons on fabrication, milling, turning, welding. Kits and more kits. Hydroponics. Alternative energy. Bizzare bicycles. Rockets. Sculpture. Intentional communities. Home chemistry laboratories. Organic gardening. A working scale-model Babbage Difference Engine. Computer controlled everything. Solar powered everything. A pedal-powered bus. Steampunk. And did I mention the life-sized “Mousetrap” game? That works? And took thirteen years to build and weighs a total of 50,000 pounds?

For something this big, and this diverse, general impressions will have to suffice, but there are several take-away impressions to be had here. The wide streak of anti-corporate, anti-establishment anarchism has already been noted, but still merits further comment. For years I and others like me have lamented the decline of DIY as it applies to scientific subjects: chemistry sets died due to fears of litigation. DIY electronics declined, in my opinion, due to their inherent complexity, cheapness (if it breaks, just buy another) and terms of purchase and warranty that promise dire circumstances for “misusing” electronic products. Other things have probably contributed, particularly the whispering campaign against science and intellectual activity in general conducted largely by conservative ideologues in power.

Robert Bruce Thompson shows what can be done in a home chemistry laboratory, and how to make one.

Maker Faire or, more properly, the Maker culture (one is tempted to call it a “movement” except that it seems to have evolved beyond that), is a gleeful revolt against all that. It embodies a conviction that technology belongs to everyone who wants to learn its secrets and use them to make life at least more interesting. I would also point out that this is the culture who by its very nature knows how to decentralize many of the technologies that are less robust, more brittle, more susceptible to direct and indirect manipulation than we have wanted to believe by virtual of their centralization. Oil, information, electricity… these are problems of existential importance. But if you want to find comfort when contemplating peak oil or the like, take a walk through Maker Faire, and here you will see the kinds of thinking that could make a post-carbon world not just bearable, but thriving.

Tomato plants in a home-built hydroponics system.

This brings me to another observation, and that is the passion inherent in the maker community for what they do. You can see this passion partly in the balance of pragmatism and perfectionism that is required to do a good bit of making or a really sweet hack. But what struck me was the artistry of what gets done. From a historical perspective, this makes sense. Throughout history it has frequently been the artisans who push the limits of technology, whether it’s stone construction of a cathedral or creating the need for more advanced desktop computers to handle large image or video files. At Maker Faire there were metal sculptures that were imposing, striking, and frivolous. There were also dazzling but equally silly geometric forms made of sugar using a tabletop 3-D fabrication machine (last year, as I recall, they used cheese-whiz instead of sugar). And yet it grabs you; draws you in and enhances the sense of wonder at this new breed of Do-It-Yourselfer.

An engine running on renewable bio-fuel.

What we are seeing in the rise of the Maker community is the very common human urge to tinker and play and invent. But this time it has been enhanced by a confluence of new technologies that have never been available before. As certain kinds of technology in general grows more advanced, it becomes harder to contain and control. The Internet is an excellent case study. It is the most complex and sophisticated communications device ever created, and yet it is also virtually impossible to control what goes on there. It has proven very resistant to control and censorship for instance. This is partly because as one person remarked, the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. But it is also because it has created metasystems in the form of communities of activists, thinkers, learners, politicos, hobbyists, and cranks. These communities in turn exist in a kind of symbiosis with the Internet–at least to the extent that the Internet can be considered “biotic”, which is probably a discussion best left for another time.

What I find so intriguing about the Maker community is the way information is shared freely, almost aggressively. There is a sense of conviction that anyone can be a Maker in some fashion, and probably should. Today’s Maker has access to tools that were unimaginable only a few years ago. And I, for my part, intend to explore and acquire familiarity with as much of this new technology as my time or budget will allow. But the real achievement of the Maker culture is that they make more than wonderful, showy, brilliant, and sometimes even useful gizmos. They make communities. In an American society that is increasingly dull and banal, I expect this movement to continue to be a waxing ray of light.