England, end of 1800s… The smell of coal in the air, machines operating constantly and shelves have started to be filled with new, appealing and most importantly, cheap objects. One of the most important intellectuals of the period, John Ruskin, is uncomfortable with this situation. For him, industrial production destroys the dignity of the artisan and the artistic nature of production. The machine caused the loss of humane features, and mechanisation was detaching humans from nature. William Morris, who turned this philosophical ground into a tangible design theory, brought a new design and an art movement to the world at the end of 19th century with The Arts and Crafts Movement. Thus, Ruskin and Morris designated a
road map for global design by bringing the manual labor of the craftsmen and the artistic knowledge of the artisan together into a theoretical frame. Their intention was to prevent people from getting away from nature, personal satisfaction and preserving the social welfare by spiritual wealth.
We know the rest of the story. Industrialisation moves on rapidly, coal gets replaced with oil and electricity. Production and population increase exponentially. Automobiles, planes, transatlantic vessels carry the products and the ones who reproduce and consume them, all around the world. Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Futurism, Modern Movement, Postmodernism come one after another. As the global resources flow into the
global cities the common balances are damaged. Media turns into a political power by means of television. Monarchies fall, nationalism and fascism rise. As a reaction, socialism and communism improve but fade out later. The cold war between the two world wars… The space race… The rising and the fall of the walls… New walls, new borders…
And Internet… An endless, global communication network in a time borders get thicker and walls higher. Humanity enters a new era with the exponentially growing global knowledge, the rapid cycle of information and sharing getting easier. Fiber wires and chips have replaced the railways and the steam machines. Now, the only thing that people use with their hands is keyboards and mouses. Even door handles and light switches are about to be extinct. The muscles getting weak and the bellies getting fat and gyms are becoming the new sanctuaries for the communities . The world is filled with billions of objects and buildings, necessary or not. There aren’t even any design movements to be named. Workers are
being replaced with robots in factories. As production and consumption increases, social welfare and personal satisfaction decrease. Owning something that has been manufactured in a factory is not as satisfying as it was, because everyone has the same thing already. Even marketing concepts have changed.
Personal… Boutique… Bespoke… Organic… Instead of having something that has been manufactured for everyone, personal production and experience economy is being promoted. Today, the scope of design is more integrated into processes, services, mindsets and awareness and it is more fluid like the social dynamics. As Zygmunt Bauman described in his fluid modernity definition, this fluidity is based on the change and the mobility of the relationships, identities and the economy of the contemporary society. This fluidity has reflected on every part of the society and every part of the production, as “personalisation”.
“Bespoke” which is the equivalent of today’s digital and fast means of production can be interpreted as the evolution of Richard Sennett’s craft term, taking the individual in the center of focus. Individualization that comes with the lightness, speed and accessibility in digital fabrication is both notable for the final product and the design processes. Apart from a designer chasing after the signature building/product, maker
works on sharing its own know-how, transferring it and letting it be improved by others. This open format in which the intellectual property transfers from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved”; giving one the opportunity to build their own ideas on a ground someone else has already developed and still personalise them.
The footsteps of a new age concerning design and production are getting closer. Dale Dougherty can be considered as the new age’s John Ruskin from the USA. Dougherty, who started publishing the Make magazine in 2005, is accepted as the father of the Maker Movement. The movement emerged to oppose the situations presented in Richard Sennett’s book, The Corrosion of Character. The individual, who is a small piece of a grand mechanism, is getting exhausted and wasting away in a work order disconnected from what the mechanism produces. In Sennett’s example, even if the bakers know how to bake the bread, they don’t know how to fix the broken electric ovens.
Architects who spend their lives in front of an AutoCAD screen don’t know how a stair railing can be mounted to the staircase. No one is able to see the whole picture of what they are producing in this fragmented production process. As the outcomes of the work are being united by the others, individual satisfaction breaks apart and disappears. Even though it has been pronounced many times, the thing expected in the corporate business world isn’t creativity but obedience.
This movement Dougherty started with the Make magazine in 2005 and afterwards the Maker Faire fairs, is seen as a life saver for young brains who are suffering from dissatisfaction. The Maker movement that supports sharing instead of competing, skills instead of money, experience instead of memorised knowledge starts gaining supporters all over the world in a short time. Such that even its own manifesto has
been written during this time, as a summary: Do, Share, Give, Learn, Play, Participate, Support and Change. According to Chris Anderson, the Maker movement that supports democratic design and production as a response to the totalitarian production processes and the star designers promoted by the media is a new industrial revolution. With 3D printers, open source computers and countless online resources, this revolution has already begun appalling the thrones of the global production corporations. To be a part of the Maker movement, one doesn’t have to know only computer softwares and have experience with technology. Today, even the people growing plants in their gardens or open YouTube channels for recipes
are considered as a part of the movement. The economical side of the movement sometimes scares the big corporations. For example, as the home beer production increased, the beer companies in Turkey requested additional taxes for homemade beer. There is also a dark side to it of course. Someone who prints a gun with their 3D printer is also considered as a Maker.
On the other hand, billions of people are still busy with taking selfies using phones they can’t even change the battery of. The grandchildren of the generation who knew what a carburettor is, are now waiting for the autonomous automobiles. Small entrepreneurs are being bought by large companies and eventually they fade away.The world is slowly being controlled not by governments but by companies, which have budgets bigger than the most countries in the world. Looking from this side, is the Maker movement marketed as a source of hope, wasting creative minds for nothing? Or putting it this way: Despite having a manifesto, is it possible for a movement that doesn’t have a strategy or a person in charge, to create a revolution?
*Reference to a verse of the poem “Strow-blonde” by Nazım Hikmet
** The third issue of Design Unlimited, which I edit, was published in the fall of 2017 with the theme of the maker movement. The introductory text written on the theme of this issue, which brings together those who think and produce on the subject as the maker movement spreads around the world.