Pressing the Print button at the TechShop has a whole different meaning than most other places in the world. Rather than commit a few milligrams of ink or toner to a paper document's surface, choosing Print on one of the TechShop's lovingly-recycled machines might move the contents of your CAD file to a table-top laser cutter whose beam can render your design in neatly-etched pieces of plastics, woods, paper or cardboard, fabric, leather, and even chocolate. Other labs within the tidy industrial building located on the outskirts of Palo Alto, CA have hardcopy capabilities that include a 3-D printer which produces solid plastic models directly from CAD drawings and a plasma jet cutter that can slice the parts for your next race car, bio-fuel converter, or battle-bot out of ½-inch plate steel.
But as interesting as the gadgets that seem to lurk in every corner of the shop might be, the most remarkable thing about this post-modern geek clubhouse is that it's inhabited by amateurs -- people from all walks of life who are united by their urge to tinker. Many of the engineers, accountants, housewives, and artists who come to the TechShop have never seen a milling machine, plastic blow molder, or TIG welder before they set foot in the subscription-based facility, but that changes quickly as they gain the skills and technical resources they need to transform their ideas into reality.
According to its founder, Jim Newton, the shop's goal is to give anyone who's interested in playing with technology the opportunity to get their hands dirty. This is reflected in the opening lines of TechShop's page:
"TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time, and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment...or a Kinko's for geeks."
For $100 a month (or $30/day) you get the run of a shop stocked with every basic hand tool known to humanity, plus a complete machine shop, wood shop, an electronics fabrication facility, equipment for making jewelry, molding plastics, and lots more. The only catch is that the larger, more interesting (i.e., dangerous) machines require you take a training class ($30) before you're allowed to run amok on them. TechShop also makes classes on topics like the finer points of circuit board design, CAD software, or mold making for another $30 a shot. This gives newfound opportunities to many ordinary Silicon Valley residents who are denied workspace by inflated real estate values that would price the single car garage used by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard to launch their business at around $150 k.
If there is a typical sort of person the place attracts, it might be the friend who hosted me on my visit to the TechShop. He's an electrical engineer but loves to mess with all kinds of technologies. Since his cramped Silicon Valley garden apartment does not have the space he needs, he uses the TechShop's resources to develop and manufacture components for the low-cost, high-efficiency wind generator he's had brewing in his head for the past few years.
In addition to the propeller-head set you'd expect to see at the TechShop, the freedom of possibility that it offers attracts an amazingly diverse crowd. On the day I visited, the class on basic lathe operation had included a fashion designer who was learning how to make her own spun aluminum buttons for a new line of clothing she was developing. And while I did not get a chance to meet the fellow who's using the shop to build a prototype of a new kind of rocket engine, I did bump into a guy whose hobby is collecting antique electronic calculators. As an especially big fan of the early Hewlett-Packard scientific calculators, he came to the TechShop to learn all about mold making and injection molding techniques which he hopes to use to build replicas of the classic HP-35 and HP-45 series.
Of course there is also some delightfully random weirdness that occurs when you get this many creative minds together in one place. Take, for example, the quiet side project a few members have taken on to modify a small industrial robot to enable it to decorate birthday and wedding cakes.
Even if you don't live near Silicon Valley, or the TechShop, you can get a good sense of the creativity being unleashed by this new wave DIY culture by taking a look at the imaginative gadgets and applications that fill the pages of Make Magazine, a quarterly publication whose self-described mission is to "celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will."
Besides offering a much more compelling and hopeful vision of the future than Big Tech, these new DIY-ers will be instrumental in defining how we use technologies to enhance our humanity and add quality to our lives. I also expect that the ideas coming out of this movement will provide the inspiration for many of the most important products of the next decade. That's why I'll be attending Make Magazine's 2nd annual Maker Faire, held May 19 - 20, 2007 in San Mateo CA. I'll be there and hope you'll be able to make it too. If you do attend, be sure to say "hi" if you see me. I'm easy to spot -- just look for the heavyset guy with the beard, shoulder bag, and Hawaiian shirt.
Comments? Questions? Great ideas for DIY projects? Write me at: lhg at en-genius.netlhg@en-genius.net
