HCC: Small: How Do-It-Yourself Makers are Reinventing Production, Labor, and Innovation

信息技术生产的当代景观受到了20世纪60年代和70年代所谓“创客文化”的深刻影响。从Mac OS X到Android，从TiVo dvr到Linksys网络设备，从Amazon.com到b谷歌Chrome，技术领域充满了依赖开源和类似替代生产模式的产品。目前，社会发现自己正处于一场新的创客运动之中，这场运动既与早期的模式相呼应，也在很大程度上与之背道而驰。它植根于一个不断增长的“创客空间”网络，将网络一代的想法和实践扩展到硬件和制造业。创客空间是一种合作工作室，人们通过使用计算机控制的激光切割机、3d打印机和微控制器套件等技术，在开放共享软件代码和硬件设计的基础上，开发新的技术设计方法。创客空间是探索创新新模式的地方，是重新评估开放和参与价值的地方，是锻造人与技术之间新关系的地方。为了理解这些现象，本项目将在四个创客空间进行民族志研究，从社会技术的角度对它们进行研究。该项目的目标是了解创客运动中文化和物质实践之间的关系。因此，我们将重点放在创客空间的日常实践上，特别关注他们如何尝试社会组织模式、分布式协作和同伴生产。选择了特定的研究地点来突出关键问题。两个位于美国，在信息技术（IT）创新和生产中心（纽约和旧金山）；其中两个位于中国，位于商业发展新模式发展的关键地点（深圳是中国主要的生产中心，上海是中国创意和IT产业的中心）。通过民族志调查，该项目将研究DIY（自己动手）制作作为一种实践，以及创客空间作为物理场所，如何促进技术、经济和社会创新新模式的发展。在广泛的文化和社会政治背景下，本研究将研究同伴生产、DIY和开源制作、行动中的创新模式以及IT工作的物质生产。这种探索将帮助我们理解非专业的专业知识和技术知识的替代形式，分布式协作，以及思想和人工制品的跨文化交流。这项研究通过关注物理站点对社会组织和开源生产的影响，补充了先前发表的关于对等生产的调查。该项目为人机交互中出现的物质性问题提供了具体的民族志基础。更广泛的影响：作为DIY生产的场所，创客空间在技术生产和日常世界之间提供了一个重要的接口。与此同时，它们也可能是重新思考当代技术和商业创新过程的重要场所。本研究将有助于评估和理解这些可能性，支持该领域的教育发展（如学校内的创客空间基础设施），探索小规模商业生产的替代形式，激励参与，并开发知识产权。在某种程度上，创客空间体现了一套关于人、技术和创新周期之间关系的更广泛的文化价值观，该项目将提供经验和概念材料，以支持围绕这些问题的社会进程。作为一种大规模的公共实践，DIY生产提供了一个重要的论坛，将以学术为基础的知识生产模式和以公民为基础的知识生产模式联系起来，并提供了扩展到社区的机会，其中科学和技术工作是其身份的一部分。

The contemporary landscape of information technology production is one that has been profoundly influenced by the emergence of so-called "maker culture" in the 1960s and 1970s. From Mac OS X to Android, from TiVo DVRs to Linksys network appliances, from Amazon.com to Google Chrome, the technology landscape is full of products that depend upon open source and similar alternative models of production. Society currently finds itself in the middle of a new maker movement that both harkens back to the earlier model and also departs from it in significant ways. It is rooted in a growing network of "makerspaces" that expands ideas and practices of the Web generation into hardware and manufacturing. Makerspaces are cooperative studios where people develop new approaches to technology design based on the open sharing of software code and hardware designs through the use of technology such as computer controlled laser cutters, 3-D printers, and microcontroller kits. Makerspaces are places where new models of innovation are explored, where values of openness and participation are re-assessed, and where new relationships between people and technology are forged.To understand these phenomena, this project will conduct ethnographic research at four makerspaces, studying them from a socio-technical perspective. The goal of the project is to understand the relationship between cultural and material practices in the maker movement. Accordingly, the focus is on the daily practices in makerspaces, with particular attention to how they experiment with models of social organization, distributed collaboration, and peer production. Specific research sites have been chosen to highlight key questions. Two are located in the United States, in centers of information technology (IT) innovation and production (New York and San Francisco); two are located in China, at key sites for the development of new models of commercial development (in Shenzhen, a major Chinese production hub, and in Shanghai, a center for the Chinese creative and IT industry). Through ethnographic investigation, the project will examine the questions of how DIY (Do-It-Yourself) making as a practice, and makerspaces as physical sites, contribute to the development of new models of technical, economic, and social innovation.Within a broad cultural and sociopolitical context, this research will study peer production, DIY and open source making, models of innovation in action, and the material production of IT work. This exploration will help us to understand non-professional expertise and alternative forms of technical knowledge, distributed collaboration, and inter-cultural exchange of ideas and artifacts. This study complements previously published investigations of peer production by focusing on the effect of physical sites on social organization and open source production. The project provides a concrete, ethnographic foundation for emerging questions of materiality in human-computer interaction.Broader Impacts: As sites of DIY production, makerspaces provide an important interface between technological production and the everyday world. At the same time, they may also represent important sites for rethinking contemporary processes of technological and commercial innovation. This research will help to assess and understand these possibilities, support educational developments in this area (such as makerspace infrastructures within schools), explore alternative forms of small-scale commercial production, incentivize participation, and develop intellectual property. To the extent that makerspaces embody a set of broader cultural values about relationships between people, technologies, and the innovation cycle, this project will provide empirical and conceptual material to support social processes around these questions. As a large-scale public practice, DIY production provides an important forum for connecting academic-based and citizen-based models of knowledge production, and the opportunity for outreach into communities in which scientific and technical work is part of their identity.