Making is not a rebel movement, scrappy individuals going up against the system. While the shift might be from the corporate to the individual (supported, mind, by a different set of companies selling a different set of things), it mostly re-inscribes familiar values, in slightly different form: that artifacts are important, and people are not.
Chachra, Debbie. “Why I Am Not a Maker.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, January 23, 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-i-am-not-a-maker/384767/.
As I read the article “Why I Am Not a Maker” by Debbie Cachra, I found that my preconceptions on societal value were questioned. There is a large emphasis that is put on the idea of creating tangible products, and other pursuits are seen are valued less in both monetary compensation and prestige. As Cachra notes, despite the value that we place on creation above other activities, it is still contextualized as something “rebellious”. “Making” is seen as a way of breaking the current norm and pushing society towards an evolved form even though this defiance is highly valued.
My academic career has been centered around developing skills and theoretical knowledge that would help me produce something tangible. This reading made me question the origin of those aspirations and made me recognize how I have been implicitly programmed to value this goal above others.
While the article questions the merit of this set of values, it lead me to ask a different question. How does the increase in availability of digital tools allow a greater number of people bring the value provided by a maker to their own work?
It is difficult to argue against the value that artifacts of our work can provide in a corporate setting. Individuals can have an impact on company that is much greater than any tool, but individuals are prone to change. People can move, quit, change positions, or die. By focusing on a “making”, businesses have a way to create sustainable value given by the individual. Makers are packaging their own ingenuity and skills in a way that exists outside of the individual. The increase in the number of tools we have at our disposal has allowed more people to package their value in a sustainable way.
In relation to the digital humanities, digital tools allow academic experts to package their knowledge in a way that can exist beyond them. Although writing papers does accomplish this goal, these tools can make inaccessible topics accessible and allow greater flexibility in the way that we distribute and save academic insight.
