Maker Households

tonzijlstra.eu knowledge work, learning, social media Maker Households #SHiFT2010, Lisboa zondag 18 april 2010 I am here today to do two things.

zondag 18 april 2010 Pedro and his team asked me to try and bring everything that happened in the past 2 days together under one notion: 'Maker Households'.

Networked life, networked work, networked learning DIY zondag 18 april 2010 And the second thing I want to do is to talk to you about how we can start looking at DIY not just as a skill or skillset, but also as a literacy.

Maker Networked life, networked Households work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 So we can live in these what I call 'Maker Households'.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hals/3411707611/ Detour zondag 18 april 2010 But to be able to do both of those things I need to take a somewhat winding detour.

Networked life, networked Internet work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 I need to discuss internet and mobile communications with you, what is great about it, and what is problematic about it.

Networked life, networked State o.t. World work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 And I also need to first talk to you about the state of the world we live in. Because only then you will see why I think DIY as a literacy, or Maker Households, is not just an exciting thing, but also may well be our only feasible way forward.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hals/3411707611/ Detour zondag 18 april 2010 So let's start with the detour leading up to this story that I created over the past two days. And the detour starts with something you are probably familiar with.

Internet zondag 18 april 2010 In the past 15 yrs we mainstreamed 2 new infrastructures and connected people in the furthest regions of our globe to it. Internet

Mobile Communications http://flickr.com/photos/elmine/2810898742/ zondag 18 april 2010 and mobile communications. These infrastructures are unique compared to any other infrastructure that went before. First of all. Conventional infrastructures basically always connect two geographic locations.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jeanlouis_zimmermann/4086699424/ zondag 18 april 2010 Your bathroom to the sea

zondag 18 april 2010 Rail station to rail station

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pierreverhoeven/379217537/ zondag 18 april 2010 Phone to phone

zondag 18 april 2010 Letter box to address

Metro Station Us, Today zondag 18 april 2010 This means with these infrastructures I need to know where you are to be able to reach you. I need to know where you are staying to send you a letter. I need to know where you will be to take a train to the station nearest to you. I need to know where you are to be able to call the telephone closest to you.

We are the ‘end-point’ http://flickr.com/photos/elmine/2810898742/ zondag 18 april 2010 With internet and mobile communications this is no longer true. Because you are the end-point. I don't need to know where you are to reach you. I can count on the network to find you wherever you are.

Synchronous - Instantaneous http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pierreverhoeven/379217537/ zondag 18 april 2010 Second, Traditional infrastructures either connected you instantaneously in real-time,

Asynchronous - Delayed zondag 18 april 2010 or only with significant time delays asynchronically.

Synchronous - Asynchronous - Instantaneous zondag 18 april 2010 Internet and mobile communications can do both synchronous and asynchronous communcations with the speed of light. It is from these characteristics that the great new affordances embodied in social media grow.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ryanr/142455033/ Easy Sharing zondag 18 april 2010 Easy sharing (Lee, furry animals) Easy sharing, and easy responding

Easy Group Forming zondag 18 april 2010 Easy groupforming, by easy finding other people with similar interest

Easy Access zondag 18 april 2010 and the democratization of access to large bodies of information.

Digitalization of Everything http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/fungibleconvictions/4460728984/ zondag 18 april 2010 And on top of that easy sharing the digitalization of basically everything. (in the pic a DIY bookscanner) This leads to three kinds of more:

More connections zondag 18 april 2010 More connections. Around the globe, connecting individuals to individuals on an unprecedented scale. Reaching into the farthest corners.

More speed zondag 18 april 2010 More speed. With so many new pathways information can spread like never before, and all at the speed of light. It means responses to information are also much faster. Those of us earning their money by trading in information advantages have much shorter time frames to do that. In general the cycle of action-reaction speeds up. The speed of change is therefore once again increasing.

More information zondag 18 april 2010 More information. With the myriad of pathways added, the higher propagation speed of information, and the responses to that coming quicker and quicker, all of that easily shared again over the manifold connections.

Networked life, networked more=different work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 More is not just more but more is different. The resulting increase in complexity in our societies is adding a layer of meaning and possibilities.

Infrastructure zondag 18 april 2010 We know already very well from previous infrastructures that they have societal effects outside of the technology itself.

Standardized Time http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dhdesign/1096464615/ zondag 18 april 2010 That we all have the same time on our watches and phones is basically an outcome of the railroad and the need for train schedules. Before 1911 there was no unified time in the Netherlands (75 years after the 1st train connection was build!), and my home town would have a 20 min difference with Amsterdam. There is nothing in a train or in a piece of track that has anything to do with how we tell time. Yet a railroad infrastructure has.

Hyperconnected Individuals / Empathy zondag 18 april 2010 Likewise our new infrastructures, internet and mobile comms, are having major effects on society outside the technology. And while it is still too early to say how that exactly will play out, there are already some effects visible of course. I would like to discuss a few of those effects in more detail: Hyperconnected individuals and empathy.

Organizing without Organization zondag 18 april 2010 Organizing without organization.

Small World Syndrome http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/johhlegear/695552819/ zondag 18 april 2010 Small world syndrom, and

Cascading Network Vulnerabilities http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/marc_smith/3671772954/ zondag 18 april 2010 Cascading network vulnerabilities.

Hyperconnected Individuals / Empathy zondag 18 april 2010 First, Hyperconnected Individuals and Empathy

We are the ‘end-point’ http://flickr.com/photos/elmine/2810898742/ zondag 18 april 2010 We, each of us, are the end-point of internet and mobile communications. And right now there are several billion of these end- points. We are able to connect to each other without fail on a person to person basis. And it's not just connecting in the literal sense where I simply connect to send some information to you.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ryanr/142455033/ Easy Sharing zondag 18 april 2010 It's not just easy sharing,

Easy Group Forming zondag 18 april 2010 it's also easy group forming.

Deeper Level zondag 18 april 2010 It's also connecting on a deeper human level.

Networked life, networked Empathy work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 It's also enabling us to send empathy through the connections.

Village zondag 18 april 2010 We can feel empathy for those we recognize as individuals, those we accept as human. Historically that meant our family, our band, our village. Now we get to experience each other as an individual regardless of where you are. And it makes us feel empathy with people in places where we could not do so before.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/8230954@N04/3236511064/ Personal Global Village zondag 18 april 2010 We are creating our personal global village through 1 to 1 connections to people in far flung places. And through those networks, those many new connections new information and knowledge flows.

George Siemens: Connectivism Networked Learning http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dnorman/3346785297/ zondag 18 april 2010 We are also starting to learn through these networks. So much so that George Siemens came up with the term 'connectivism' for this networked learning. We are making sense of the world through our personal global network.

Organizing without Organization zondag 18 april 2010 Organizing without Organization We can loosen ourselves out of organizations because the thing an organization does: give us access to the people, the means and the info to do our work, can now be done just as easily without an organization.

Networked life, networked 60% , 9% work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 You can see that in the number of 1 person bizzs in NL. Nearly 60% of all businesses are now 1 person businesses, representing 9% of the work force. That number started to rise when internet and mobile phones reached 75% and 67% percent in their penetration respectively. It's the network effect kicking in.

Your Network zondag 18 april 2010 At the same time you see new forms of grouping, through the easy group forming internet enables (because you're sure you are reaching the person you want to reach: you are the endpoint). Agile teams coalescing around an event, a theme or a project.

Organizations as Tools http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/herzogbr/2274372747/ zondag 18 april 2010 We are DIY-ing our organizational structures when needed, and toss them out again immediately afterwards. Organizational structures are tools, and we're increasingly treating them as such. This runs counter to the history of the last 100 yrs or so, where we started treating organizations as entities in their own right, having many of the aspects of a person in day to day transactions.

(c) Valdis Krebs, orgnet.com zondag 18 april 2010 But we can see organizational hierarchies now as just a specific form of network. This hierarchy is the same

(c) Valdis Krebs, orgnet.com zondag 18 april 2010 As this network, which in turn, is part of

(c) Valdis Krebs, orgnet.com zondag 18 april 2010 A bigger set of connections

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jonasb/64797095/ Organizations as Mushrooms zondag 18 april 2010 So now we have these ad-hoc groups to get things done. Groups that form like mushrooms on the underlying mycelium.

Network as Mycelium zondag 18 april 2010 Mushrooms that dissolve back into the mycelium or network, when the work is done.

Small World Syndrome http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/johhlegear/695552819/ zondag 18 april 2010 Let's talk about another effect internet and mobile communications are having on us: the small world syndrome.

Club of Rome, 1972 zondag 18 april 2010 Theoretically we've known a long time that our earth is a closed system. The Club of Rome report from 1972 already tried to model scenarios based on that notion as related to when different resources would start to run out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_(lin-log_scale).png zondag 18 april 2010 Theoretically we've known a long time that what seems abundant locally really needs to be seen in a global perspective, and in relation to the ever growing world population.

zondag 18 april 2010 Because what seems abundant locally As my seafood lunches during last SHiFT

zondag 18 april 2010 Often proves to be scarce globally

zondag 18 april 2010 Like forests

zondag 18 april 2010 Likeour glacier fresh water reserves

Small World zondag 18 april 2010 The small world syndrome is the realization that that finite world is not just theory.

Networked life, networked Growth Paradigm work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 Our global economy has 'growth' as fundamental paradigm. That growth paradigm is a core feature of our money system. All of our money is created out of nothing through lending. You need to pay interest on that loan. However that interest is not created with your loan. The interest needs to come out of whatever money somebody else took out as a loan. In short there is always a shortage of money worldwide, the size of the combined interest due on all those loans. So you need to grow. To get the money to pay interest. Grow or fail people look for things that are abundant, to 'cheat' the system as it were. one more colony to capture One more tribe to enslave One more forest to cut down One more oil well to tap. Our growth paradigm depends on some resource being abundant outside the money system But there’s none left We've already known that theoretically for some time. But now it is becoming visible reality for the masses.

Cascading Network Vulnerabilities http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/marc_smith/3671772954/ zondag 18 april 2010 Being connected to the internet in the way we are also introduces unintended negative effects. The much more intensive connections that we maintain, as well as the empathy that flows over those connections constitutes a vulnerability to cascading effects. Because it also means we are connected in ways we're not really aware of.

Networked life, networked US Mortgage vs Iceland work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 So when a bank in the US starts selling mortgages with disregard to the risks involved Iceland goes bankrupt, and the shelves of a supermarket in Reykjavik are emptied.

Networked life, networked Great Depression work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 This in itself is not new. The 1930's depression was also felt around the globe, but the connections were not as omnipresent as now and the spread of news wasn't as fast.

Networked life, networked Interdependent Complexity work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 But it's not just the speed of how things can spread that is potentially problematic. It's also the system complexity that is the result of all these connections and the feedback that creates. Because of all the connections the interdependency becomes bigger and the economic strive for efficiency makes every connection more critical. So that if some part of this interdependent system fails, that causes problems that propagate through the entire global network. It's like the rainforest. If you take out one small part out of the ecosystem, the system itself is damaged as a whole.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hals/3411707611/ Detour Summary zondag 18 april 2010 So, coming to the end of my rather long detour, on the one hand we have:

zondag 18 april 2010 Infrastructure that connects us all to each other, giving us access to the whole of human knowledge and experience, and the digitalization of everything. But Infrastructure that at the same time introduces the risk of cascading problems propagating to you through the network. And a global economy where what we used to treat as abundant, is now seen as finite and increasingly scarce. And as it seems we have nowhere left to go to tap abundance elsewhere: the small world syndrome.

Networked life, networked Proposal learning work, networked zondag 18 april 2010 I want to propose a way to leverage the potential of internet to make sense of everything around us to find a place of new abundance in the face of increasing resource scarcity a cure to the small world syndrome, to protect us from the cascading network vulnerabilities

Networked life, networked Local Resilience work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 I hold that the answer is in local resilience, within that global connectedness we have.

Networked life, networked DIY as Literacy work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 And that is finally where DIY comes in. As a literacy.

Networked life, networked Maker Households work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 I want to suggest to you, we need to become aware that we are living in. Maker Households

Networked life, networked Local Resilience work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 Let's have a closer look at what local resilience needs to look like in our global connected societies.

Abundance zondag 18 april 2010 Internet brings digital abundance And for that closer look at local resilience, let's first take a look at where the abundance is in our networked age. The new abundance lies in the digitalization of everything. All of our collective knowlege and creativity, and in us all having easy access to that. We have always treated human creativity and ideas as scarce. We cultivate the myth of the lone inventor. At the same time we treated physical resources as abundant.

Michel Bauwens on P2P zondag 18 april 2010 We now realize much more deeply than before that those material resources are in fact scarce, and we need to start seeing our creativity as the only source of abundance we have left. Flipping our view around like that, is, as Michel Bauwens says, at the heart of the P2P concept. Ideas are abundant, resources are scarce.

Digitalization of Everything http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/fungibleconvictions/4460728984/ zondag 18 april 2010 The digitalization of everything, combined with easy sharing, easy groupforming and organizing without organizing, is how we can leverage that abundance of human creativity.

Lower Thresholds http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/olivierh/3526714156/ zondag 18 april 2010 Digitalization is lowering thresholds everywhere, lowering the cost and effort for everyone of us to start doing something ourselves. Removing the need for incumbent processes and structures, as well as a lot of professional specialists. That lowering of thresholds is happening in many different areas. And ALL of them create more opportunity for people to do things themselves. I will mention only a few that are visible to me.

FabLabs zondag 18 april 2010 FabLab, bringing industrial production capabilities into the hands of individuals, enabling local and personal digital production.

Digital Photography zondag 18 april 2010 Digital Photography, where we all now are able to make pictures, alter them, change them, and share them. So much so that WalMart in the US refuses to print pictures every now and then because they think they might be copyright infringements.

Digital Movies zondag 18 april 2010 Digital movies, like we've seen in Elmine's self made documentary here at SHiFT

Open Street Map zondag 18 april 2010 Open Street Map, where people create their own maps. Which if it needs be are more accurate and up to date then anything availalble. After the earthquake in Haiti it was people DIY-ing that created an accurate map of Port Au Prince including all the refugee camps, and the streets as they were AFTER the earth quake.

Wikipedia zondag 18 april 2010 Wikipedia, DIY your own encyclopedia

GarageBand zondag 18 april 2010 Garageband, allowing you to enjoy music lessons and learning to play an instrument yourselves.

Open (Gov) Data zondag 18 april 2010 Open Data, opening up the vast amounts of data that is available within our governments that people can build new insights and new uses, products and services on. Like Trine Moller in Denmark who created a map of all public toilets in her country.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/ideas912/912choleraho3.html Linked Data zondag 18 april 2010 Linked Data, which makes us all into the new doctor Snow. Linking up all that newly opened data creates new layers of insight and possibilities. Doctor Snow was.....

Open Design zondag 18 april 2010 Open Design, sharing the design of the things you make so other cna make a product in their own environment. You share the design, while retaining your IP.

Social Web zondag 18 april 2010 Social Web, enabling us to form groups and keep track of the multiple groups and communities we are part of. They allow us to scale social interaction to a global scale, where before you could only do that with the people in your geographic vicinity

Internet of Things / Arduino zondag 18 april 2010 Internet of Things, making the things around us aware, and we have open source hardware like Arduino to do that ourselves.

Open Source Software zondag 18 april 2010 Open Source as a concept is very much connected to all of this, DIY your software.

Network Visualization zondag 18 april 2010 We can now do our own Network Visualization, with tools like NodeXL to help us understand much better how we are connected, and how we can leverage that network to learn more and to filter information, and to make sense of the world.

zondag 18 april 2010 Genetic Technology is also rapidly becoming available to individuals. With DNA sequencers becoming very affordable and requiring no special rooms or set-ups to work with. Bio FabLabs you can say. And YES that IS an iPhone docking station there.

zondag 18 april 2010 And all of that bioengineering knowledge is available open source, through Open Wetware.org

George Siemens: Connectivism Networked Learning Information Literacy http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dnorman/3346785297/ zondag 18 april 2010 And there's skills connected to that, that we have to acquire individually, so we can work with these possibilities in the context of our communities. Networked learning I already mentioned, and the information literacy skills that come with it.

Org/Community Skills zondag 18 april 2010 We need to learn the skills that come with organizing without organization, and dealing with group dynamics or community buiding. And all that is available online freely in digital form.

Increasing Application http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/63768749@N00/463008673/ zondag 18 april 2010 And all those new possibilities (and they really do feel abundant don't they, looking at that long list?), are being applied. If we learn how to apply that abundance that is available in our globally connected networks, and learn to apply that locally given whatever materials are available there, we are becoming locally resilient. Resilient to the cascading network problems. More resilient to the scarcity of materials. Leveraging the abundance of human creativity. It's already happening, especially there where people see no other option anymore.

In Production zondag 18 april 2010 production, we already saw the FabLabs, but they are crucial to people in India, Afghanistan, Ghana, as wel as the US already to improve their lives locally, using globally available knowledge and designs Here you see FabFi bringing wireless Internet to Afghanistan, building it out of trash basically.

In Urban Farming http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ambienttrafﬁc/13906992/ zondag 18 april 2010 Food, urban farming in US cities is already happening.

In Energy http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/3904083660/ zondag 18 april 2010 Energy, locally sourcing renewable energy sources

In Banking zondag 18 april 2010 Banking, like Kiva. Where individuals can invest through microlending and get a return

Networked life, networked <>Autarkylearning work, networked zondag 18 april 2010 By using and applying all those possibilities ourselves, in our own local environment we are forming Maker Households, and creating local resilience through that. You do have to realize I am talking about local resilience, not about local autarky, and especially not local autarky in the classic sense that we all will have our own pig or win our own chicken and grow our own food. That's an unattainable thing, unless we are prepared to bring back the global population to under 1 billion. I am talking about local resilience, in the context of more than 50% of the global population living in urban areas.

zondag 18 april 2010 So it's about leveraging all that human creativity digitally available, and realizing fully that that probably will result in us growing our meat in a petri dish. So this is not about utopia. It is more about survival really.

Networked life, networked 1 Shift learning work, networked zondag 18 april 2010 We need to see all those digital skills and possibilities, all that abundant human creativity, and see them as one collective thing. As representations of the same shift.

Howard on Literacy http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/marc_smith/3753342317/ zondag 18 april 2010 Local resilience is possible in Maker Households. Maker Households are the hub of local resilience. But it takes more than just the skills to use the possibilities out there. It takes that we turn those skills into a literacy. My friend Howard Rheingold explains the difference between a skill and a literacy as follows:

Skill http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/-wit-/1859812082/ zondag 18 april 2010 If you know how to fish, and only you have that skill, it is empowering you.

Literacy zondag 18 april 2010 If you know how to read and write, and only you have that skill, it's useless, or it may drive you crazy. It will certainly make you look crazy.

Networked life, networked Literacy = Skill + Community work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 Literacy is the combination of skills (reading/writing) with community (of readers and writers).

Networked life, networked DIY = Literacy work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 We therefore need to see all these digital possibilities and skills not as just skills but as a literacy. We need to see these skills in the context of the communities we live in. Maker Households turn DIY skills into a literacy.

Skill is out there: RepRap zondag 18 april 2010 The skills are out there Like Erik building a RepRap

Community is out there: RepRap.org zondag 18 april 2010 the communities are out there as well. Like RepRap.org, a whole community of RepRap builders, improving on the concept.

Networked life, networked Be DIY Literate work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 Now go forth and DIY. Do not just be DIY skilled. Be DIY literate.

Networked life, networked Your Skills learning work, networked zondag 18 april 2010 Use your skills

Networked life, networked Your Communities work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 AND use them in your communities.

Networked life, networked Live in a Maker Household work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 Live in Maker Households.

Networked life, networked Economy = Household work, networked learning zondag 18 april 2010 And remember that economy originally means just that : Household.

Our Way Forward zondag 18 april 2010 Maker Households are our way forward. It is how we build a new economy, in the light of both our networked age as well as our scarcity and climate impaired physical world.

tonzijlstra.eu knowledge work, learning, social media Credits All photos: Ton Zijlstra, by nc sa Except where mentioned on photo, all Slides: http://slideshare.net/tonzijlstra Blog: http://zylstra.org/blog Contact: ton@tonzijlstra.eu Skype: ton_zylstra Twitter: @tonzylstra zondag 18 april 2010 Thank you very much for your time and attention.

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Maker Households

by Ton Zijlstra on Apr 19, 2010

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Maker Households — Document Transcript