This link has been bookmarked by 164 people and liked by 1 people. It was first bookmarked on 23 Jan 2015, by someone privately.
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12 Jan 17
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prescriptive technologies
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holistic technologies, where the creator controls and understands the process from start to finish
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Ayn Rand on how any work that needed to be done day after day was meaningless, and that only creating new things was a worthwhile endeavor.
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The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
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Making is not a rebel movement, scrappy individuals going up against the system.
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it mostly re-inscribes familiar values, in slightly different form: that artifacts are important, and people are not.
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Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
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Code is "making" because we've figured out how to package it up into discrete units and sell it, and because it is widely perceived to be done by men.
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Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making
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its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving
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I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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25 Oct 16
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20 Aug 16
Tania ShekoWhen tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others. Every once in a while, I am asked what I “make.” A hack day might require it, or a conference might ask me to describe “what I make” s…
IFTTT Pocket maker gender coding makered culture making issue
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15 Aug 16
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13 Jun 16
Dan Zuberbier"When tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others."
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26 May 16
Greg KulowiecUnique perspective on what happens when we adopt the title of "Maker" and how it impacts ones value and role in society.
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24 May 16
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Rachel SmallIs Maker Movement about accessing traditional 'male' ways of thinking? https://t.co/BL20VMi2T3 #socialjustice #Makerspaces #tlchat
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23 May 16
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09 May 16
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27 Apr 16
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concerns
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exactly
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women
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hearth
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system
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people
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surgeon
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those
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"making."
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done by men
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undervalued
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lower
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effects
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something
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11 Apr 16
Jon SwindleWhen tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others.
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09 Mar 16
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to the distress of my mother. (While I admit the possibility of a misinterpretation, as I haven’t read Rand’s writing since I was so young that my mother oversaw my housekeeping, I have no plans to revisit it anytime soon.) The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech
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Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men
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26 Feb 16
Paul McGuire@cherandpete As I'm reading this again: https://t.co/QqtkWZ7fys @nobleknits2 @JCasaTodd @mcguirp @MrSoclassroom @avivaloca @laurie_azzi
– Brian Aspinall (mraspinall) http://twitter.com/mraspinall/status/702484604670717952 -
25 Feb 16
Lisa Noble@cherandpete As I'm reading this again: https://t.co/QqtkWZ7fys @nobleknits2 @JCasaTodd @mcguirp @MrSoclassroom @avivaloca @laurie_azzi
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24 Feb 16
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17 Feb 16
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04 Feb 16
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26 Jan 16
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25 Jan 16
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24 Jan 16
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18 Dec 15
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A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable. Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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16 Dec 15
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But you can also think about coding as eliciting a specific, desired set of behaviors from computing devices. It’s the Searle’s "Chinese room" take on the deeper, richer, messier, less reproducible, immeasurably more difficult version of this that we do with people—change their cognition, abilities, and behaviors. We call the latter "education," and it’s mostly done by underpaid, undervalued women.
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To characterize what I do as "making" is to mistake the methods—courses, workshops, editorials—for the effects. Or, worse, if you say that I "make" other people, you are diminishing their agency and role in sense-making, as if their learning is something I do to them
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14 Dec 15
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05 Dec 15
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23 Nov 15
Sara WilkieDoes the Maker Movement perpetuate 'making' as "intrinsically superior to not-making"? @sewilkie https://t.co/b9caStUKTI
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22 Nov 15
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20 Nov 15
Yin Wah KreherEveryone who thinks “maker” is the Only True Calling needs to read @debcha's essay: https://t.co/AguI9oZGjp pic.twitter.com/cZLCz8eO5g
— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) November 19, 2015 -
11 Nov 15
Clare GormleyWhy I Am Not a Maker http://t.co/dn8ZP89r2j
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20 Oct 15
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Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men. But behind every one is an invisible infrastructure of labor—primarily caregiving, in its various aspects—that is mostly performed by women.
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The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
-
Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
-
When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost.
-
To characterize what I do as "making" is to mistake the methods—courses, workshops, editorials—for the effects. Or, worse, if you say that I "make" other people, you are diminishing their agency and role in sense-making, as if their learning is something I do to them.
-
I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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01 Oct 15
"Code is "making" because we've figured out how to package it up into discrete units and sell it, and because it is widely perceived to be done by men.
But you can also think about coding as eliciting a specific, desired set of behaviors from computing devices. It’s the Searle’s "Chinese room" take on the deeper, richer, messier, less reproducible, immeasurably more difficult version of this that we do with people—change their cognition, abilities, and behaviors. We call the latter "education," and it’s mostly done by underpaid, undervalued women." -
01 Sep 15
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25 Jul 15
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23 Jun 15
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22 Jun 15
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Ursula Franklin contrasts prescriptive technologies, where many individuals produce components of the whole (think about Adam Smith’s pin factory), with holistic technologies, where the creator controls and understands the process from start to finish.
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People have happily informed me that I am a maker because I use phrases like "design learning experiences," which is mistaking what I do (teaching) for what I’m actually trying to help elicit (learning).
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A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”
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Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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08 Jun 15
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23 May 15
Thomas James"Why I Am Not a Maker
When tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others.
Dave Catchpole/Flickr
21k 3.1k
DEBBIE CHACHRA JAN 23, 2015
Every once in a while, I am asked what I “make.” A hack day might require it, or a conference might ask me to describe “what I make” so it can go on my name tag.
I’m always uncomfortable with it. I’m uncomfortable with any culture that encourages you take on an entire identity, rather than to express a facet of your own identity ("maker," rather than "someone who makes things"). But I have much deeper concerns.
An identity built around making things—of being “a maker”—pervades technology culture. There’s a widespread idea that “People who make things are simply different [read: better] than those who don’t.”
I understand where the motivation for this comes from. Creators, rightly, take pride in creation. In her book The Real World of Technology, the metallurgist Ursula Franklin contrasts prescriptive technologies, where many individuals produce components of the whole (think about Adam Smith’s pin factory), with holistic technologies, where the creator controls and understands the process from start to finish. As well as teaching my own engineering courses, I’m a studio instructor for a first-year engineering course, in which our students do design and fabrication, many of them for the first time. Making things is incredibly important, especially for groups that previously haven’t had access. When I was asked by the Boston-based Science Club for Girls to write a letter to my teenaged self (as a proxy for young girls everywhere), that’s exactly what I wrote about.
But there are more significant issues, rooted in the social history of who makes things—and who doesn’t.
Walk through a museum. Look around a city. Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men. But behind every one is an invisible infrastructure of labor—primarily caregiving, in its various aspects—that is mostly performed by women. As a teenager, I read Ayn Rand on how any work that needed to be done day after day was meaningless, and that only creating new things was a worthwhile endeavor. My response to this was to stop making my bed every day, to the distress of my mother. (While I admit the possibility of a misinterpretation, as I haven’t read Rand’s writing since I was so young that my mother oversaw my housekeeping, I have no plans to revisit it anytime soon.) The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by the order of men.
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.
It’s not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with making (although it’s not all that clear that the world needs more stuff). The problem is the idea that the alternative to making is usually not doing nothing—it’s almost always doing things for and with other people, from the barista to the Facebook community moderator to the social worker to the surgeon. Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
In Silicon Valley, this divide is often explicit: As Kate Losse has noted, coders get high salary, prestige, and stock options. The people who do community management—on which the success of many tech companies is based—get none of those. It’s unsurprising that coding has been folded into "making." Consider the instant gratification of seeing "hello, world" on the screen; it’s nearly the easiest possible way to "make" things, and certainly one where failure has a very low cost. Code is "making" because we've figured out how to package it up into discrete units and sell it, and because it is widely perceived to be done by men.
But you can also think about coding as eliciting a specific, desired set of behaviors from computing devices. It’s the Searle’s "Chinese room" take on the deeper, richer, messier, less reproducible, immeasurably more difficult version of this that we do with people—change their cognition, abilities, and behaviors. We call the latter "education," and it’s mostly done by underpaid, undervalued women.
When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost. Consider the economics term Baumol’s cost disease: It suggests that it is somehow pathological that the time and energy taken by a string quartet to prepare for a performance—and therefore the cost—has not fallen in the same way as goods, as if somehow people and what they do should get less valuable with time. (Though, to be fair, given the trajectory of wages in the U.S. over the last few years in real terms, that seems to be exactly what is happening.)
I am not a maker. In a value system that is about creating artifacts, specifically ones you can sell, I am a less valuable human.
I am not a maker. In a framing and value system is about creating artifacts, specifically ones you can sell, I am a less valuable human. As an educator, the work I do is superficially the same, year on year. That’s because all of the actual change, the actual effects, are at the interface between me as an educator, my students, and the learning experiences I design for them. People have happily informed me that I am a maker because I use phrases like "design learning experiences," which is mistaking what I do (teaching) for what I’m actually trying to help elicit (learning). To characterize what I do as "making" is to mistake the methods—courses, workshops, editorials—for the effects. Or, worse, if you say that I "make" other people, you are diminishing their agency and role in sense-making, as if their learning is something I do to them.
In a recent newsletter, Dan Hon, content director for Code for America wrote, “But even when there’s this shift to Makers (and with all due deference to Getting Excited and Making Things), even when ‘making things’ includes intangibles now like shipped-code, there's still this stigma that feels like it attaches to those-who-don’t-make. Well, bullshit. I make stuff.” I understand this response, but I’m not going to ask people—including myself—to deform what they do so they can call themselves a "maker." Instead, I call bullshit on the stigma and the culture and values behind it that rewards making above everything else.
A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable. Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell."maker engineering technology culture twoculturebollocks DebbieChachra shockoftheold interesting Iagree
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16 May 15
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06 Apr 15
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02 Mar 15
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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.
-
It’s not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with making (although it’s not all that clear that the world needs more stuff). The problem is the idea that the alternative to making is usually not doing nothing—it’s almost always doing things for and with other people, from the barista to the Facebook community moderator to the social worker to the surgeon. Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
-
When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost.
-
A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable. Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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28 Feb 15
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24 Feb 15
jjgerlachInteresting read: Why I Am Not a Maker http://t.co/UnGiXInT2D cc: @bushjms @mikekaechele @techsavvyed
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23 Feb 15
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Steve SongVery interesting take/critique of #Maker culture http://t.co/KMTi7N2UAC HT @ludost11
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17 Feb 15
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15 Feb 15
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Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
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13 Feb 15
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11 Feb 15
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As a teenager, I read Ayn Rand on how any work that needed to be done day after day was meaningless, and that only creating new things was a worthwhile endeavor. My response to this was to stop making my bed every day, to the distress of my mothe
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he gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
-
The problem is the idea that the alternative to making is usually not doing nothing—it’s almost always doing things for and with other people
-
When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost.
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as if somehow people and what they do should get less valuable with time
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03 Feb 15
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02 Feb 15
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I’m uncomfortable with any culture that encourages you take on an entire identity, rather than to express a facet of your own identity
-
The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home
-
Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
-
-
01 Feb 15
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An identity built around making things—of being “a maker”—pervades technology culture. There’s a widespread idea that “People who make things are simply different [read: better] than those who don’t.”
-
Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by the order of men.
-
A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first.
-
I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
-
-
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As a teenager, I read Ayn Rand on how any work that needed to be done day after day was meaningless, and that only creating new things was a worthwhile endeavor. My response to this was to stop making my bed every day, to the distress of my mother. (While I admit the possibility of a misinterpretation, as I haven’t read Rand’s writing since I was so young that my mother oversaw my housekeeping, I have no plans to revisit it anytime soon.) The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
-
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.
-
In Silicon Valley, this divide is often explicit: As Kate Losse has noted, coders get high salary, prestige, and stock options. The people who do community management—on which the success of many tech companies is based—get none of those. It’s unsurprising that coding has been folded into "making." Consider the instant gratification of seeing "hello, world" on the screen; it’s nearly the easiest possible way to "make" things, and certainly one where failure has a very low cost. Code is "making" because we've figured out how to package it up into discrete units and sell it, and because it is widely perceived to be done by men.
-
But you can also think about coding as eliciting a specific, desired set of behaviors from computing devices. It’s the Searle’s "Chinese room" take on the deeper, richer, messier, less reproducible, immeasurably more difficult version of this that we do with people—change their cognition, abilities, and behaviors.
-
We call the latter "education," and it’s mostly done by underpaid, undervalued women.
-
When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost.
-
In a recent newsletter, Dan Hon, content director for Code for America wrote, “But even when there’s this shift to Makers (and with all due deference to Getting Excited and Making Things), even when ‘making things’ includes intangibles now like shipped-code, there's still this stigma that feels like it attaches to those-who-don’t-make. Well, bullshit. I make stuff.” I understand this response, but I’m not going to ask people—including myself—to deform what they do so they can call themselves a "maker." Instead, I call bullshit on the stigma and the culture and values behind it that rewards making above everything else.
-
Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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31 Jan 15
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30 Jan 15
Tony BorashWhy I Am Not a Maker - Atlantic Mobile http://t.co/FGJZVlISWG
— Zoe Heggie (@zheggie) January 30, 2015 -
Spencer CrossA brilliant articulation of some of the things that bother me about “maker” culture: “Why I Am Not a Maker,” http://t.co/NPHb9XiE0Y
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28 Jan 15
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27 Jan 15
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Chris DedeControversial perspective on the Maker movement. Generated a lot of online comments.
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The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
-
-
-
An identity built around making things—of being “a maker”—pervades technology culture. There’s a widespread idea that “People who make things are simply different [read: better] than those who don’t.”
-
But there are more significant issues, rooted in the social history of who makes things—and who doesn’t.
-
The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.
-
Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.
-
In Silicon Valley, this divide is often explicit: As Kate Losse has noted, coders get high salary, prestige, and stock options. The people who do community management—on which the success of many tech companies is based—get none of those
-
When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost
-
A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first
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26 Jan 15
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Leonard KjeraWhen tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others.
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fcsdjcA fantastic post by @debcha: “Why I am not a maker” http://t.co/VgkgqkF6NY
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Yee Sian NgWhen tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others. Every once in a while, I am asked what I “make.” A hack day might require it, or a conference might ask me to describe “what I make”...
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Micah BalesWhen tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others. Every once in a while, I am asked what I “make.” A hack day might require it, or a conference might ask me to describe “what I make”...
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Matt Landahla million times yes to this http://t.co/3lAvcmKN3G "Why I Am Not a 'Maker'"
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But you can also think about coding as eliciting a specific, desired set of behaviors from computing devices. It’s the Searle’s "Chinese room" take on the deeper, richer, messier, less reproducible, immeasurably more difficult version of this that we do with people—change their cognition, abilities, and behaviors. We call the latter "education," and it’s mostly done by underpaid, undervalued women.
-
-
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Ursula Franklin contrasts prescriptive technologies, where many individuals produce components of the whole (think about Adam Smith’s pin factory), with holistic technologies, where the creator controls and understands the process from start to finish.
-
Code is "making" because we've figured out how to package it up into discrete units and sell it, and because it is widely perceived to be done by men.
-
Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable.
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leahammond"
Why I Am Not a Maker
When tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others. " -
25 Jan 15
JR DingwallWhy I Am Not a Maker http://t.co/rbYnUKOEvl
— jennymackness (@jennymackness) January 25, 2015 -
Oliver Quinlan"When tech culture only celebrates creation it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others" http://t.co/WnXrU46l8N
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Alex Ingram"When tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, take care" http://t.co/5C0qid5hrj via @lauraolin
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Jackie Gerstein"Why I Am Not a Maker" http://t.co/PJeOhWtmKt But - why not broaden the definition? Make an argument, make a case, make a difference.
Interesting. "@jackiegerstein: Why I Am Not a Maker http://t.co/iP7q3ePlLP #makered although I disagree with several points...... -
24 Jan 15
Tyler AmidonInteresting. "@jackiegerstein: Why I Am Not a Maker http://t.co/iP7q3ePlLP #makered although I disagree with several points......
— Zoe Branigan-Pipe (@zbpipe) January 24, 2015 -
Weiye Loh"Walk through a museum. Look around a city. Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men. But behind every one is an invisible infrastructure of labor—primarily caregiving, in its various aspects—that is mostly performed by women. As a teenager, I read Ayn Rand on how any work that needed to be done day after day was meaningless, and that only creating new things was a worthwhile endeavor. My response to this was to stop making my bed every day, to the distress of my mother. (While I admit the possibility of a misinterpretation, as I haven’t read Rand’s writing since I was so young that my mother oversaw my housekeeping, I have no plans to revisit it anytime soon.) The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home."
Home-maker Maker Culture Culture Technopreneurship Technology
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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.
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When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost. Consider the economics term Baumol’s cost disease: It suggests that it is somehow pathological that the time and energy taken by a string quartet to prepare for a performance—and therefore the cost—has not fallen in the same way as goods, as if somehow people and what they do should get less valuable with time. (Though, to be fair, given the trajectory of wages in the U.S. over the last few years in real terms, that seems to be exactly what is happening.)
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“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable. Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.
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mjwhite1When tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others.
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