Democratizing the Maker Movement

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 9, 2015 @06:00AM from the leveling-the-playing-field dept.

aarondubrow writes: To its advocates and participants, the Maker Movement resonates with those characteristics that we believe makes America great: independence and ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness. But as impressive as today's tools are, they're not accessible to many Americans simply because of their cost and high technological barrier to entry. An article in the Huffington Post describes efforts supported by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies to create new tools, technologies and approaches to make the Maker movement more inclusive and democratic.

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Re:Inventing New Ways to BLB by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · 2015-09-09 08:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you have the space, buying the required tools to build 99% of everything (including larger tools) is only going to cost a few thousand dollars.
That's the two main problems right there. A lot of people can't afford "a few thousand dollars" to buy tools. And a lot of people living in towns and cities live in apartments: they don't have the space and they can't run most tools because of the noise and dust generated by them.