Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Martha Stewart for geeks
"In his latest Newsweek column, veteran tech reporter Steven Levy looks at the emerging DIY technology movement, as embodied by MAKE: Magazine. (Full disclosure: I contribute to MAKE:.) From the article:
All this is evidence of a growing movement of people eager to tinker with high-tech gadgets and Dumpster detritus—and, I suspect, an even bigger population harboring fantasies about modding their espresso machines, building their own printed circuit boards and engaging in the brave new world of kite aerial photography. We've already seen the popularity of house porn (shelter magazines and "Extreme Home Makeover"), car porn (auto mags and "Pimp My Ride") and food porn ("Iron Chef"). Now we've got geek DIY (do it yourself) porn. Just as would-be Emerils pore over lushly illustrated cookbooks with recipes involving hard-to-find morels and complicated instructions for roux, Tom Swift wanna-bes are devouring Make and reading books like William Gurstelle's "Backyard Ballistics," which has sold more than 160,000 copies...
What's more, as we spend more time with our computers, the primal side of us yearns for the visceral kick of hands-on experience. Killing a thousand aliens in some pixilated corner of cyberspace can never duplicate the satisfying phoomph that comes from shooting a potato out of a homemade PVC-pipe cannon.