Broad
and intangible thoughts being sewn together – that’s how I view our class
discussions shaping up as we iterate through our reflections and critiques of
the maker movement. The prism of science that we are currently looking through
with Rebecca Onion’s book Innocent
Experiments, and its relation to the tinkering and experimenting ethos of
the maker movement, has focused our conversations and has us return to themes
we have explored earlier in the course. In our critique of Barack Obama’s (painful
in hindsight)“boundless optimism” in regards to the maker movement and
scientific innovation, we went back to a theme we have explored before: is the
maker movement being used “for good”? Should it? And are our perceptions of “bad”
merely partisan? Or do they hold impartial merit? The prospect of the
Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security coopting the maker
movement is troubling for those who see its potential for disrupting consumer
capitalism. Yet, our ability to control the direction of the maker movement is
out of our hands, simply because the pressure to innovate exceeds the boxes and
boundaries we want to demarcate for our own personal agendas.
Think
of the maker movement like one of those sewing machines from Lindsey’s class demonstration.
After threading the needle, aligning the fabric, and pulling the presser foot
down, all of the elements are set for a change to occur based on the
interaction of these elements. Yet, this relies entirely on the amount of
pressure applied to the pedal that operates the machine. Too little pressure
applied – the needle doesn’t even break the fabric; hardly any change has
occurred. Too much pressure applied – you lose control of the sewing machine
and its rampant needle and the trajectory of the fabric is anyone’s guess. The amount
of innovation, creativity, and money applied to the maker movement is like the
pressure of a foot on a sewing machine peddle. Right now, the path of the maker
movement is boundless as the innovation peddle is being stomped to the floor.
Our debate on what the maker movement “should” be doing and where it “should”
go makes no difference as more makers become involved in its creative cycle and
we lose control of the needle making its interwoven threads.
The
irony of using a sewing machine as an analogy for the maker movement is not
lost on me. A key symbol of domesticity and femininity meant to resemble
innovation seems like common sense in our current era, especially with the
advent of electronic textiles. Yet, the historical context that surrounds
gendered innovation must be addressed in order to foster the inclusivity in the
maker movement that a symbol like a sewing machine allows. Onion’s retellings
of the sale of home chemistry sets demonstrates how exclusion was the primary method
of defining innovation that labeled boys as the “future” of science in the
United States. The marketing and packaging of these materials proposed that
boys who bought them were preparing themselves for “manly” career pursuits, as
the “nature of science [was] perceived as a military, industrial, and entrepreneurial
pursuit.” [1] The predetermining of these boys’ futures through gendered advertising
had the effect of separating girls from innovative pursuits, as their goals
were perceived to be in direct contrast to the boys’ mischief and
experimentation. Onion further details, “Home chemistry labs—sometimes in truth,
and often in legend—existed in opposition to mothers’ efforts at imposing
domestic order, a fact that amplified the perceived maleness of the space,
further excluding girls.”[2] The lineage that connected boys to the sphere of
innovation was not available for girls, whose predetermined path was down the corridor
of domesticity. The symbol of the home chemistry set as a tool for tinkering
carried gendered elements that ultimately impacted disparities in how girls
perceived themselves as being willful participants in the scientific realm.
Therefore, caution must be exercised when deciding what constitutes making and
what doesn’t, because the tools and materials that we use to make things
transform into symbols that include or exclude, thus determining the
composition of the future of making and its movement.
--
[1] Onion, Rebecca. Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), p. 47.
[2] Onion, Innocent Experiments, p. 69.
