Taking the Measure

Electronics makes consumers stupid—that’s a position I suggested in an earlier post, and now the New York Times has recognized the trend. Lawrence Downes, writing in an Editorial Observer column titled “Mister Jalopy Wants to Make a Better World,” starts off noting, “The word is out that technology makes us stupid. I am in no position to argue, having recently spent a week blundering around Southern California in a rented SUV, surrendering my brain to a sultry-voiced GPS unit. ‘When possible,’ she kept telling me, ‘make a legal U-turn.’”

He writes, “Mental atrophy is all around us. It’s a big theme of ‘Wall-E,’ that fierce indictment of the human race disguised as a family cartoon. Its human characters are supersized and infantilized by all-encompassing robotic care.”

There are many reasons why technology makes people stupid. For the most part, tech products are not interactive. You can’t take them apart—often you can’t even replace the battery. You can no longer set mechanical points in your car in your garage. The days of Heathkits are long gone. As Downes puts it, technology is “magically opaque.”

The antidote, he suggests, is the Maker movement, whose goal is to “reassert creative control over technology.” He cites the Maker Faire, where “participants share ideas for previously unimagined tools, toys and forms of locomotion.” (Read Margery Conner on the Maker Faire here.)

Downes also cites Mister Jalopy, whose “latest mission is taking the Maker mentality to manufacturers, urging them to make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose, or even reinvent.”

Let’s hope the manufacturers listen to him, or that new manufacturers appear that follow Mister Jalopy’s “Maker’s Bill of Rights.”

And if you are looking for a Maker-friendly business to start, read Margery’s takeaway from the last Maker Faire—it’s called “15 steps to starting your own electronic kit business.”