A New Age: The Maker Age

I’ve talked about a ‘MakerNet’ before, but not the term ‘maker age.’ Both of these terms, however, appear on the site of the new product / service I review here — Blokify. ‘Maker age’ is pre-emptive, but, unlike some things done pre-emptively this century, it may actually turn out to be true… The information age is turning into an age where the digital becomes the physical. Blokify takes that pertinent point and turns it into a simple but powerful touch-screen app. Minecraft for makers. Kinda.

Blokify calls itself ‘block-based modelling software, allowing you to design your world, in 3D.’ Let’s be clear, this is not the kind of world aimed at advanced engineers. But it is the kind of world aimed at advancing engineers: the one’s of the future… our children.

What is Blokify? from Blokify on Vimeo.

Modern day kids are amazing. I often ramble on about technology being the primary driving force of human evolution via culture, with a direct effect on our genes, via RNA – epigenetics. Another more obvious link is the direct influence of tech on kids. There are YouTube videos of three year olds using tablet computers. The easier interfaces get, the more able kids are to prove the most amazing element of the brain of higher intelligences: adaptability. I’m going to seemingly go off on a tangent. It’s relevant to 3D printing as you’ll see.

The adaptability of homo sapiens is not a reason to fall over ourselves in worshipping the intelligence of our own species in anthropocentric bias. There are apps for apes. Some primates have better memory and speed of basic calculus than humans. Crows average a problem solving ability of about that of a human seven year old. The capacity for intelligence of various species is still being uncovered whilst humans continue to create the fastest mass extinction event in Earth’s history.

Now, only a Jurassic Park-esque genomic replication of extinct species into the extant biomass will prevent the great tree of life from collapsing. A good reason for concern would be that the survival of our species is contingent upon that of the food chain, the very geology and atmosphere of the Earth is inseparable from the biomass – gaia. If this sounds too ‘politically leftist,’ here are the thoughts of Bill Gates, not a leftie as evidenced here. I’ll end the left v right strata shortly. A better reason is that all life is precious, consciousness is not monopolised by Homo Sapiens.

Entrepreneurs: From an ‘everything is a commodity’ perspective, there will be a considerable market in creating and breeding species en mass to fill in the gaps of thousands of species that are culled by mankind’s current relationship with the ecology every year. I started on this seeming tangent by mentioning that this is relevant: By 2035, maybe sooner, we will be bioprinting species on demand. Commodified for food, also keeping the biomass afloat. The end of purely biological Darwinian evolution, achieved by humans in just 6000 years.

Given that our survival as a species is now contingent upon the next generation being more skilled at creation than this one – tertiary services such as tourism are probably not going to stand up too well if life on Earth is dying. One for those who have got caught up in climate change denial to ponder: whether we weather the weather or not, there’s not going to be all that much to commodify left on poorer current trajectories – although things are getting better. We’ll make it through this. With action in reality mind you, not shooting at vectors on an Xbox.

Blokify takes gamification and vectors into a more useful realm. Sure, the onus of the examples is on good old-fashioned fun – a blocky castle, a blocky spaceship, a blocky desert – to build in the digital realm and convert to the physical realm via 3D printing, but as our political decision makers rightly point out – these skills enable our children to become the maker generation. In the US, even President Obama’s USD$200 million additive manufacuring NAMII initiative is now rebranded as America Makes. The future impact of manufacturing skills is huge.

Indeed, soon the US will be renamed the United States of Makerica, no matter which party wins the next election when the Clinton Dynasty (Hilary this time) competes with the Bush Dynasty (Jed this time)  to show the world just how anyone can become an elected representative in a real democracy in 2016…  I’m serious. But, trends in representative democracy in the US do not undermine that it is still the world’s most democratic superpower. Russia’s choice is a one-man Dynasty, or a Prisoner. Released… for now.

No political point scoring here writing from the UK. Here, the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband beat his brother the former Foreign Secretary to become the leader of the opposition against the ruling Conservatives. That very Conservative party produced a Prime Minister extremely close to friends from university, via the Bullington Club, with the Chancellor (Money Admin Bod?) and the Mayor of London (Capital Admin Bod?)… and what’s more both the Prime Minster and Mayor of London are actually related to the unelected monarch… all true.

So, now our democratic / dynastic leaders have come round to 3D printing as a way to kickstart the future manufacturing economy we can, all political tongue-in-check critique aside, look to beautiful little apps like Blokify to create a brighter future, with democratised manufacturing via 3D printing and democratised funding via crowdfunding. I and many others have been talking about these democratising influences for a few years now, so, with genuine humility, it’s nice to see our dynastic / democratic leaders also cottoning on.

Albeit strategic ‘cottoning on’ and befriending Bre ‘just borrowed the RepRap communities conveyor system and accidentally copyrighted it. But you can still use it. We copyright other people’s work to make sure its’ open source’ Pettis of MakerBot (who now charges $130 per kg of filament) whilst ignoring RepRap creator Adrian Bowyer, who BBC Radio 4, in the only reference I’ve ever heard the BBC (the world’s largest media organisation – also known geopolitically as ‘soft power…’) make to him, recently summed up as ‘a socialist.’

This is about as far from the point of self-replicating maker machines as I could think. But, the old school propaganda of Marx versus Freedom that was genuinely needed when Stalin achieved the only real possible outcome when the single party state is given sole control over the means of production – tyranny, just ask China – is now used to distort the potential of individual ownership of means of production (home 3D printers). Some fear home 3D printing, crowdfunding and opensource when combined could threaten the nature of Capitalism itself.

That’s not the point. The point is that they can rejuvenate our Neo-Capitalism that, via Liaison-Faire, became a feudal system driven by a choice for the majority of either unsustainable personal debt or leasing land from the property owning feudal lords. The Maker Movement and Capitalism work on different degrees of scale, thus are compatible and can be integrated in the Neo-Capitalism that has emerged from the cataclysmic economic collapse of The Great Recession 2008 – 2012: something only nationalising finance and industry got us through.

Why the summary of the reality of a post-Socialism-v-Capitalism few have yet to read about?

Simply, Blokify’s mission statement:

‘Our mission is to deliver software that helps you imagine and make real a different world. Join our movement to dream big and create you.’

All sounds a bit serious. Still, I believe we are heading towards a better future. Our leaders can, just, be trusted to something approaching the right thing in representative democracies. We don’t need to abstain from voting and prepare for a revolution as comedian / actor Russell Brand has just suggested. Let’s not ridicule him however, as we’ve seen in this article and it’s every point based by evidence, we are on the edge of a cliff crumbling fast beneath us. Concern is rational. Fortunately, technology is now at the point where we are ready to fly…