Author: Subir

Last time we saw some analogies between Pune traffic and electronics.

• Imagine its 8AM on a weekday. The IT parks and companies and schools and what not feel a very desperate need for some people to come over and occupy their seats and so some work so that the organizations could sustain and hopefully make some money to live out their lives (yes organizations behave as self-serving organisms!). On the other hand the people residing in Kothrud for example feel some form of similar desperation to reach in the required zones (organizations) in time so that they may be able to live happily ever after. The requirement of both groups for each-other exist purely for their own satisfaction, irrespective of higher goals, mostly. Also one does only care for the other as far as their survival is concerned, and nothing more.
• Now at 8AM, the mobile group makes this whole drama to get into their cars and bikes and buses and move over to the awaiting arms of the organization, all at the same time because its convenient for all organizations and people to work synchronously in a city, why – i don’ t know. Its just like that i guess. Anyways, all these lacs of people moving about from one end of the city to another, criss-crossing each other, this road or that road, non-linear paths, honking and exchanging pleasantries to as many one can find involved in similar goodness – all for the sake of meeting the desperation of both the organizations and individuals.
• On the way the mobile group bumps into fixed or moving objects, creating vibrations to both the interactive parties. Most of the times they don’t bump in, nevertheless the pressure of reaching a certain place in time and uncertainty of road ahead cause frantic adjustments in the movements, keeping everyone in an alert dynamically changing state. If the dynamic state is essential to the flow of this group.
• Also the roads are too important on the way!! Pune has nice roads, except many are under perennial construction and especially with the synchronized mobility choose to attain a life of their own. And they also have some rough surfaces, all in the best interest of the mobility (used here like ‘ nobility’ ) so that they don’ t slide off too quickly or reach their destinations before time!!! So these roads too modify the movement of the people, taking toll on their energy and draining it as the humbum and noise of the traffic. The noise and mystery of traffic jams pass on to other members of the mobility way way remote from the starting point of jams, as if reflection has taken place.
• Sometimes, bikers in Pune decide enough is enough and discover new roads no one knew ever existed. If a pioneer discovers a part, a whole group of ardent followers are developed within a fraction of a second following the path of their true leader until they find another leader opening another path for them. Who says we have no leaders, we have plenty, only they are busy discovering paths on the blocked roads!
• And then there are the mandated traffic signals that try to regulate the different current flows into different paths, keeping one flow from obstructing other flow and avoiding traffic jams. Pune’s bikers however know with mysterious precision when a signal need not be taken seriously, like total stop or total start, especially during peak hours. This infact has a new effect that the traffic never stops completely, just varies in speed through a signal, everyone just adjusting to each-other so much so that the traffic remains optimized all the time, even while criss-crossing at right angles! What a splendid example of an ecological balance!
• There are one way streets where only a few obey the direction while the others obey their perception of dynamic directions. However these streets do help maintain and distribute traffic in certain ways.
• Also there are dividerless roads in plenty where opposite moving traffic interact almost while touching their counterparts, the line between them having a life of its own. When a signal is in force, the bikers and cars crossover the divider lines and huddle up as if the watching a signal turn green is the most interesting sight they will ever seen in their lives!
• While the people move about, their movement creates an immense effect on the sides of their paths. New shops and restaurants and vehicle repair workshops crop up, catering to this mind-boggling every day activity thousands are involved in. While some of that immense activity is just the useless noise and confusion and humbum, there is a significant part of it that is useful for another ecological activity – the roadside business. So any traffic movement can be associated to carry with it the side forces that help carry on the movement.
• Somtimes the reverse happens. A immense roadside activity attracts non-desperate people to move over from far off places to these roadside places, leading to another form of ecological movement.
• Most importantly, many companies to which these people move to survive on the manufacturing the mode of transport required for their movement. Kind of a self-serving cycle of events, feeding into one another.

The above could just be the case of electrons (people). The desperation being the voltage, the number of traffic size being the current, the roads and obstructions being the resistance, the signals being the transistors. The huddling up or swelling of traffic at a signal or slow road being the capacitor effect. One way street being a diode and so on. A more conventional and beautiful explanation is given in this video:

Once explanations are out of the way, we could proceed to some experiments. The ideas is what activity one can do that will A) Excite and B) Inform? The former is especially important since after the previous explanations their minds would have totally gone switch-off and so that needs to be revived.

• Lets begin with a diode. What is a diode and why it is important could be explained. Give students an LED each and ask them to look at it. Also observe some aspects of it, especially the leg length. Explain them the concept of current flow, and how high current could damage the diode. How does a diode gets damaged?
• How to restrict the current? Give them the largest resistor, and make them figure out the resistance of the resistor. Color codes and all.
• Connect all of them in the set direction, so that things glow of not glow with the battery one.
• Now change the resistance and see what happens.
• Explain the concept of bread board, to ease the process.
• Explain the concept of a multimeter to ease the process.
• Can you add switches to the circuit so that its not always on and save battery?

A general question would be to probe and bring out what the students already know about electronics from the deepest and farthest corners of their minds.

• electrons exist and move around
• Oh and they can move in certain directions together too.
• But why move in certain direction? what fun in all this? – While moving, the desperation of moving can be used to get some output.
• This desperation can be measured – called Voltage
• How many electrons are desperate can be called current
• But if so many desperate people wish to move to a certain direction, can they all move in one go? What if the road is narrow? or if the bus is old? or if there’s no road!!
• We could explain a little bit of welding here, because of the stool making workshop.
• But there’s something that makes the voltage and current not independent of each other!! – Mr. Ohm comes in here. How can one explain resistance? Toll booth could be a nice example or a police checkpoint or Pune Metro?
• What happens at a traffic jam? Frustration and boredom, equivalent to the heat created in a wire due to resistance.
• Now what if too much traffic is let go on a narrow road? Too much jam/heat at the bottleneck = fights and bursting of the road down. If on both sides there is water, the traffic is stuck, else it will find paths and try to make new roads – the same as it happens on a circuit board where chaos reigns can keeps life interesting (many first hand experiences) 😉
• But why moving so much traffic from one place to another? What use? Traffic movement implies its an important road. Construct a nice one, build some hotels and shops, and make money. In electronics this could be making some work done by human manipulators.
• Like traffic, the electrons can be made to go about many circles in the city before it can cross the city to its destination. All the while adding to the chaos, the heat of the city, the jams, etc. But all this activity leads to businesses of buses and cars, of shops and stuff. The potential difference of distance between home and office divided by the manipulative city (load) inbetween with manipulators (politicians, bureaucrats, companies, etc ) constantly trying to get the best out of desperate citizens.
• One old Mr. Lorenz and Mr. Maxwell figured out how to convert the side drift effect (businesses and viewership and consumerism) that moving traffic produces to make engines! Like our economy, if there’s no traffic between distant places the local market will be saturated and wont be able to harness the energy to drive or grow economy. The current and magnetism analog could be extended further, but that’s enough for now.
• So how can electrons/people be manipulated?
  • The simplest is make a road and put a toll booth on it – the resistor.
  • Then vary the toll opening and closing to get variable traffic flow.
  • Then pass this traffic over a small diaphragm to make some sound – a beeper or make some light.
  • A transistor could be the use of some traffic to affect the flow of another traffic route, or to use a police man to switch on or off a traffic flow or control it ever more slightly – a transistor!
  • Capacitor?
  • Inductor?
  • Diode? – thats easy – a one way street.
  • Switch – a gate like thing, like on a toll booth.
  • Heater – a large road with too much traffic to flow through it…

So far we have seen the following:

• How humans have been makers all the way
• How making is the in thing now with technology and how technology itself works.
• We saw why modern way of organized large scale mass manufacturing leaves a whole bunch of population deprived of the benefit of technology because of economics.
• With a guest lecture we saw how the city we live in is driven top-down of what and how a city should develop, not concerning the citizens’ opinions itself but that of corporates and non-native glamorous ideas – big money!
• We have also began in a workshop making things for a change – the mainstay of this course.
• Now, over the time we have also collected problems we face first hand in small hand written notes.

Assignment #1 (CA1) is almost over and i am correcting the submissions. Stupid me i asked the poor students to write 2.5k words each on the topic of how technology plays a role in A) World politics B) Nature C) Rich/poor economic divide D) Gender divisions and E) In our intimate personal lives. Many did a fabulous job, and its a real pleasure to read from the fresh young passionate minds here. I guess these kids should be the teachers and we the old ones should learn to be their students and followers!

Given all this recap, where to now? OK what we will head to is here:

• Some electronics basics with a little theory and then some burning stuff.
• Some modern making tools like 3d printers
• And projects

But before we go to the above it will be important to discuss the boring subject of documentation. I know this is really not my thing, i do it sometimes, but most of the times its in my head and if i happen to have an accident or something and am alive after that but minus the memories – all is gone. Not that there’s much worthwhile in there but a lot of journeys were the bricks of mistakes and failures could make a solid pyramid.

Why we document? A boring question, but if we really ask this and ponder on it its worthwhile. Documentation is an act of casting memory, thoughts and experiences into something that will last longer. Why do we wish to make something last? A typical Society and Science type open-ended question this one. Would be interesting to get student’s views and discussions on this. A simple answer from my simple mind is – so that we may not repeat it, again! How we run away from repetitions in this case is very interesting in contrast to how we run towards repetition when it comes to rituals and traditions. So a little more poking can reveal a better answer – so that we can avoid the cognitive burden of repeating mistakes. Now rituals and traditions fall into place as there are no mistakes there, just the apparently proven, ages old techniques to hang on to for safety.

Often one encounters the notion that its stupid to reinvent the wheel. So very common, i have been at the receiving end of it numerous times. Although documentation can help prevent reinventing the wheel kind of situations, its nevertheless should not be made an excuse. Reinventing the wheel is essential for learning – artists begin by mimicking the work of masters, artisans and apprentices do the same. So do scientists and engineers. Its utter crap, this idea of avoiding reinventing the wheel. It is a must despite knowing that mistakes have been documented. But facing the mistakes first hand gives a huge dimension to our experiences – the expectation of an outcome totally falling on its face and the emotional commotion at that moment, not knowing what went wrong and what to do next. This going through the fire of mistakes (literally firey moments for many makers), catapults oneself to a significant experiential height. Coming back to documentation, reading past documentation on one hand and dealing with the humiliating defeat in front of nature makes a wonderful revelation often. It is then that the documentation of the past fits right into the cavity of the moment, the mind red hot prepared and all. So this way first hand experience and learning from n-th hand sources go hand in hand.

However, not always the experiements we do is exactly repeatable like the ones described in words of the past. The past works only can give a gist, the remaining must form an unfathomable experience only to be retained and lost forever after life’s down. Every maker makes new experiences, even if the experiment and work is the same. And there can be so many variations in the experience that if everyone chooses to write down and document, still its all worth it. This documentation of 1st hand info is one of the most valuable thing that differentiates us from the animals. In our short lifespans, its equivalent to living 1000s of years, just because we could read and contemplate a little of the documentations of the past. And thanks to this beautiful property of nature – repeatabilty, we can build from where others have left off, or even choose to go back and build from an 100 year old version!

Another advantage of documentation is for self-reference, within a lifetime. We’ll be doing many things, and will be forgetting many things. But somethings if we document, we take the pains to sit and write, kind of parking the ideas somewhere to be referred to in future, we that isn’t a bad thing is it? Often when i am asked about my projects, i point them to this site and makes my and the asker‘s job easier. I write here to clear my mind before class and also so that i could look back and see if i made sense. Sometimes some students may use some of this shit for some referencing or pointing out how dumb that teacher was 😉

In short, we should begin somewhere, so that’ll be the task tomorrow. To make a blog and post photos and videos of our projects and works and assignments for posterity.

#5 was a guest lecture by Mr. Khaliq Parker on the new wave of ‘smart’cities being driven by the government. Khaliq discussed various aspects of what it means to by a good city to live in, what we the citizens are aware of and not aware of while continuing to live in Pune for example. Then the discussion headed on to what we wish to change in Pune, a ‘Smart’ city itself. On this basis it was further discussed is we are aware of the technological interventions in this city which have already been initiated by the smart cities mission and so on. And finally the main point of having such a discussion within the maker course context was to see if the ‘makers’ could either ride on the government initiatives or form parallel citizen science initiatives of their own to arrive at a much more organic base-up development model for an urban area.

#6-7 were a stool making workshop conducted on the 26th of January 2019 at our maker friend Mr. Sandipan’s place. We wanted to make about 5 steel and wood tall stools, wooden seat and metal legs. We got all the materials and began at about 8:30 in the morning and completed only 2 by the end of the day at 8:30 in the evening. 2 batches of students, 8 each participated in this workshop and i guess they had lot of fun actually handling some tools. They used a jig-saw to cut plywood to make a form that could be used to arrange and weld metal pieces in a designed geometry. Then they cut some metal, arc welded some of these + some polishing and so on. Some students could begin working on the wooden steats, which were basically some trunk of a tree.

There’s so much scope to explore and do, so i hope we could repeat the above workshop and finish all the stools with decent looks. Fingers crossed!!

The previous sessions’s worth can be summarized as follows:

1. We have always been making: How the intensive, in fact obsessive, making has been the thing that actually makes the human separate from other species. This was discussed through a brief historical review.
2. Our needs are yet not met: How technology provides solutions to the masses and how the cost of making technology through an organized fashion diminishes the need-diversity it can cater to, so that many people use almost similar technologies. With this background it was established that there are many needs that are not met, just because A) Not many people have such a need at the same time (diversity problem) B) Even if a common need is established, it may not be worth the effort to get a company paying attention because of lack of economic returns.

How can we understand this disparity? On one hand we are obsessed with tools and even after being so good at it we seem to never be satisfied? We have so much technology around, but still majority suffer from lack of shelter, food, comfort of the weather, diseases, happiness. Why? Why not have a discussion on this?

We never stop making new tools, even if we don’t need so many tools. Or is it that we have broken the definitions of need in itself? Anyways, we make and make a so we go farther and farther away from the being we started from. No other animals has ever behaved this way. We are unique and alone in this. No examples to follow, directionless we move about, obsessed with tools and making new ones just for the heck of it. Since making tools is time and resource consuming, we as a species have evolved a very elaborate self-fooling mechanism that “generates” needs and therefore continues to create souls who need others to make new tools for them – called the growth economy. Harari (Sapiens) does a brilliant job of explaining this concept. In fact, the most consuming part of our species is this new tool-in-itself, consumerism, that has so brilliantly captured our hearts and minds. Is consumerism a disease, like an addiction or is it a “social organism” / parasite? As Harari discusses – parasites are the biggest success story of the spectrum of life – they dwell in the minds and bodies of their hosts and multiply, irrespective of the happiness or quality of life of the hosts. But there is a slight pause here, tool makers are fewer than users of such tools. Much fewer are the need manipulators who use who use the ignorance and weaknesses of the masses to feed the need making engine, they themselves consumed in the way. A perfect parasite dominated world – only we the humans are its best and most loyal carriers! This parasite looks like a pyramid, tool users are the base, tool makers are above them and the manipulators on the top with strings that control the down-belows. Nice puppetry. All this reflects the past few couple of centuries of human history – a very strange and drastic development. And all this still does not lead anywhere to the disparity between availability of tools and the needy.

Maybe this may lead somewhere: Tools are a means to an end. Shouldn’t the end decide the tool? Do we know the desired end well enough before we choose the tool? Do all ends need tools, are tools the only way? Does availability of a tool automatically decide the direction of life, irrespective of whether we wish for it to go that way or not? – I don’t know all these, but this could be a very deep discussion – would have been apt for a Society and Science class, not a practical one like this.

Anyways, come to practical stuff, 2 questions:

• How does one go about making stuff? Who are the tool makers?
• Has tool making evolved over the past?

A general discussion will throw about engineers, scientists, mechanics, etc. I would then ask what’s the difference between a scientist and an engineer? Then what’s a difference between innovation and invention? Invention typically implying a drastic development while innovation being incremental in nature.

A trick question would be to identify what is not a tool? What fun that would be!! The question would then again be: what’s a tool?

• A material object
• Has a history of evolution
• Without which the achieving an end is more difficult in terms of time required, skills and resources of material and energy.

A followup question would be why the students have not chosen to do engineering? Most of the responses will be the stigma of studying math, or the rigidity of the scientific ‘processes’ or the lack of emotionally simulating content in all this science and engineering. The latter will be hard to get from students, but is the most fundamental difference i suppose, which i feel almost never gets tossed about. Only a few relate or take active interest and pursue to see beneath the dull and dry every-day surface of the non-human/material world. Still others take active interest in manipulating the material world’s elements – the tool makers. Coming back to the question – how does one become a maker these days?

It would be interesting here to talk about how makers were some centuries past. Something that one may have forgotten: Making tools for others to use was very common – almost every human settlement had a blacksmith, a carpenter, potter, tailor, agriculturalist, doctor, etc. The needs were met by local people, for local people by using mostly local resources. But then what happened? Trade. Local stuff was no longer as fancy or as useful as outside stuff, or that there was simply no local substitute for the particular need. So with trade, makers went not-local. Trade brought in competition and need for the makers to improve on their skills. How does one develop a skill – an interesting question worth a discussion – simple answer is many many hours of fumbling around. Complicated answer is that since A) we are lazy B) Other’s who are more advanced than us are available for help, provided we work for them a bit. The latter is the basis of education – a shorter path than fumbling around in the dark for a lifetime. So how did education begin? Apprentice model comes to mind- (A beautiful book on this subject – “The Craftsman” by Richard Sennett talks about all this. I only read a part of this which i try to recollect here..)

• An apprentice works with an expert while the expert is fully conscious that the apprentice will one day become his own competitor.
• But what can an expert do, he/she needs hands to service the needs and get paid to survive as a maker!!
• Once an apprentice is somewhat trained, he/she can get recommended to travel to another expert for a more varied training.
• With enough variety of experiences had, the apprentice settles down where he/she is needed and eventually becomes an expert who hires more apprentices 🙂

This was the first hand experience model, talked about in the first lecture. Then the trader mind figured out that, why go the slow and expensive (time consuming) way of first hand experience? Everyone starting at the bottom and very slowly growing to the top, all the while aging? No wonder the top looks very old!!! How about a shortcut? This, stepping aside from the apprentice ‘1st hand’ model to a ‘n-th’ hand model (my take on it, not Sennett’s ) en mass was the education revolution. This latter development was possible thanks to this amazing property of materials and its handling called patterns, or repeatability in science. Once you learn how an iron piece can be heated red hot and hammered into a tool, say in South India, we don’t need to send this tool all the way to Europe (eg. Damascus steel) – instead we send in the recipe book of how this process works and makers there can replicate it. One time investment to pick up the new skills! Who made the first Damascus steel is unknown today (and i talk about it having never seen or felt, forget making, a Damascus steel – hence n-th hand knowledge), but it was the basis for a revolution in weapons making, thanks to the many makers who took the seed (recipe) seriously and made and improved on it.

As more and more recipe books came about, it because hard to do both the exhaustive first hand work while at the same time do the very abstract kind of n-th hand learning. But the latter was easier, cost-wise (books are cheaper than a foundry) and cognitive-ly (easier for the mind to pick up things than the hand-mind simultaneous learning). Thanks to repeatability of materials and their properties, we now have a huge huge chunk of minds working successfully using n-th hand information and producing amazing technologies. Of course aided by the craftsman/technician. But now the problem is – there are so many managers around, hardly any first-hand experts to be found, apart from the technicians. Two drastically indifferent types of people work in technology today – engineers/scientists Vs technician. How this impacts tool making is a thing worth discussion, but too advanced and irrelevant probably for my class.

Concluding the problem in short: Engineers and scientists today work on the knowledge of others and then do a minimal of first hand work. But the heavy education also limits them to A) Recovery of fees and time invested during education and also B) retaining the capability of only using the n-th hand tools as a starting point to solve even generic problems. The former thing forces them to work as part of big corporations that retain many such “peg in the wheel” people – each loosing their identity and freedom to pay for security of the big and simplicity of routine. The latter makes them useless to solve emerging problems that need first hand interpretation and exchange – the maker way.

So we have 2 things from the previous session and this one – A) companies who can’t cater to diverse needs which have no economic value and B) Well-trained potential makers handicapped/bottle-necked with the tools they have so invested in learning. Add to it the growth economy which tries to sustain companies by recreating/reinforcing the mass common needs that keep both A) and B) happy.

All this forms the basis of the maker movement. Makers are not tool-centric, but are in it for the sake of passion for making. They are the true amateurs. (Thanks to may maker friend Sandipan Das for explaining this beautiful but often misunderstood word). We love problems in all shapes and sizes, and more than that we love to learn and play with tools, new and old.

But why maker movement now? All the above was also true say 50-100 years back? So many people must have written about the industrial world, the sadness of it and so on. Maybe i am just not aware (also i was only born recently so dont hold this grudge on me).

Modern making is transformed. Unrecognizable because it has made available n-th hand information without going through the rigor of school/college/pass-fail system which focused on the method and traditions and irrelevant administration and the omnipresent lack of love for the work one does. That is what internet did, and a wave of first-hand makers came in to help the to-be first hand makers. In apprentice model, one had to find, cajole, plead an expert – often an egoistic obnoxious bum (true even now but separated by kind formal words and ‘professionalism’). Not now, now we have a range of experts to choose from, happily sharing away!

As a real first hand example: My father used to make film cameras. I have seen him slog for 20-25 years trying to make complicated parts, gear and lever mechanisms, bodies, plastic parts (using soldering iron to mold, yes i saw it!), all by hand and with only a handful of hand-tools in a small room (beautiful in its disorganization) in our home. Tool noise was as common as when the evening sets in, similar to the one from the kitchen, or of the general neighborhood. There were hardly any books which taught pa how Pentax or Canon made their cameras, or what were the latest trends or how to make some thing using better tools. My father was no engineer or scientist, but a B.Arts! For learning and keeping a community touch – pa used to repair cameras of professional photographers. All was the very genuine maker in the works. Ultimately, his prototypes (many 100s he made) didn’t work out very well in the end because of the immensely daunting task of product making and then commercialization and so on, all the while pa being a full time government service employee! Now, contrast this with my story as a maker – i make designs on a computer, read and take inputs anonymously from so many forums/blogs/scientific papers from so many kind-hearted and great makers (first-hand experimenters many of them), have near my workplace such unthinkable machines as a LASER cutter, 3d printers, lathes, etc, etc, etc. If i have questions, who do i go to? I ask in a forum and get an answer from total strangers. Isn’t this simply amazing? I feel, when i look back at how may father worked, like a cheat! My father must be so jealous of me (but he seems not, maybe ’cause he’s having a good laugh that despite all benefits, this bugger still makes engineering blunders with amazing grace and alarming regularity 😉 ). Technology, especially the internet, has transformed, more than anyone can comprehended, a maker’s journey. Thus we have makers as small as school kids who use 3d printers as they learn 2+2 in parallel.

Thus this maker revolution can be attributed to:

1. Companies not able to cater to diversity of needs.
2. Trained makers not able to steer away from the complicated growth-economy governed tools. (Can’t teach an elephant to dance among the flowers, can you?).
3. Internet has connected first-hand makers together and also drastically cut the time/effort required to transfer 1st-nth hand information through videos and images, etc.
4. Modern machines have become available that do not require much skills to begin with.

We use so many things but have we ever stopped and asked how did all this came about? How do i get all these things in the first place? Who is making these? Who are those people? Are they all engineers or scientists? What am i making that someone else will be using – intentionally and unintentionally on both the maker and the user’s side? Why do so many people study technology? Why do so many people make things? Why we need so many things in the first place? What causes a technology to develop? Is it that one fine day a person wakes up and says “I want to make this stuff that others will use.”? Or is it accidental? How much of the technology is actually accidental? Could it be true that most of the technologies weren’t intended to be used in the way we now use them? Could the makers foresee? What about those who made stuff but we dont know about them? …

The topic is not so much about how a particular technology works, but as to how technology as a phenomenon particular to this species work. Why do we engage with materials the way we do now? How did we do so earlier? Apart from the materials, what is the social and emotional construct of technology we carry around? … These are all very important questions i am sure others have asked and talked about, but I am only beginning to ask and see the world in this new light. Is it worth the light?

The confusion is where to begin the peeking from/into? If truth is a guide, its must be here and now. So could we begin with exploring how technology is affecting us now? I write on this piece made out of glorified earth (metal), sand (silicon) and remains of the dead (plastic). I ‘write’ is in itself a very deep word, rather i must use ‘punch’. I punch to keep my mind, lay before my view so that its easy to understand what i would like to do next. I look at a ‘screen’, a reflection of my own exercise in grappling with the task of describing the materials i use, the way i use them and feeling strange as to how deeply i am ignorant of the millions of ways i am using it, here and right now! Technology – an augmentation of our mind and body – overshadows our mind and body. Like my friend Yash (J) mentioned in a conversation about everything that we use/imagine/know is based on our memory of similar things, is based on the past as if our past describes what we experience at the moments or project into the future. So if technology surrounds all of this me, maybe i only know of what my augmented self (80% technology?) allows me to see? It’s as if the vocabulary of my cognitive bumbling is in itself an unexplored reflection of the augmentation – like a bug unaware that its actually a fish. For example a driver of a crane can not tend the garden rose, no matter what. Had the driver been without the crane augmented to itself, there could have been a hope. Likewise, what i say and talk and think (and not say or not talk or not think), is through the limitations/power of my augmented whole. What’s the difference between me and the augmented me? I don’t know all this, but damn its fun to acknowledge what i don’t know and allow oneself to feel awesomely small.

Keeping these philosophical bowel movements aside, could we then talk about practical world? A world i have to face tomorrow, kids looking towards a technologist expecting to get some wisdom as to what next cool thing to make – while the bug (which does not know its a fish) under the garb of the ‘technologist’ tries to put up an air of suspense around making, making-up a cover story to kill time. The topic is how technology works today. First we could begin with the safest way – ask questions to students and enjoy the beautiful answers. Ask a lot of them and its the break time. So, the questions would eventually lead to

• Engineers make technology
• Scientists invent new technologies
• Businessmen/women trade the technology and create and drive market.
• Consumers pay and get access to technology

Someone, brilliant in all other ways, will say but who creates the demand for technology? This could be another time-consuming (good for the bug/fish) discussion. Will probing result in a consensus? Consensus could be the business-person as the origin and sutradhar of it all. Or that an inspired scientist/engineer who sees the problem. Or a consumer who’s unhappy with the available technology.

Could the making and dissemination of technology be seen as a priced commodity product – traders hoarding it till demand increases and then releasing it to make profits? What may follow is the whole IP game and trade secrets things. In this light some open source concepts could be discussed.

One very important thing that i wish to discuss is the formal organization of technology development today. There are companies, government labs, NGOs, governments, bureaucrats, politicians and so on. Question could be for discussion: who are the participants in technology. A fundamental question here is also if technology development is in parallel to technology dissemination, but thats a philosophical question. So, how is technology organized?

• A company sees demand in a population.
• It measures how much is the demand, and estimates an expected profit of demand is met.
• Parallelly it also checks out of the demand can be met technologically.
  • Either technology exists elsewhere.
  • Or technology has to be developed based on previous technology.
  • Either ways it estimates cost of ‘getting’the technology.
• Then it computes the cost of supplying the technology.
• The the cost of letting the needy know that
  • Technology solution exists
  • This company has that technology.
  • How this company’s offer is better than other’s.
  • How much would it cost to the needy.
• Then it computes the cost of distribution, sales and services.
• Then it compares it with market demand, competition, paying capacity of the customers and the value of the technology to the customers. Based on these calculations, subtracting all the manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution costs, along with year long maintenance costs, stock of inventories, legal fees, future buffer, bank loan interests, anticipated/unanticipated market fluctuations decided on profit margin.
• If things go good, there is profit to the endeavor.

What the above approximate story line talks is how difficult it is to sustain in technology if one is starting afresh. So running after model technologies is the norm – where model of operation is established, proportions of cost and risk distributions are well known and market demand is fixed and known. Many things are known, and risk is minimum. Thus the part 1 of the above story is no longer relevant, unless the market is forced to consider it. This trend stereotypes commercial making in India, its not new need driven, a conservative needs company culture. But what happens when needs are not the same as yesterday? – Very important discussion.

OK, now how do companies ensure that they understand the conventional need driven market? Do they really need to if everything is set in the first place? Yes. Incremental needs are a mainstay, and one needs to always be ahead of the competition – a dynamic need. So they hire technical people to keep on the edge of technology – not on the bleeding edge but only as close as to not step into the murky and risky zone where blood spill is a reality. So these follower companies agressively follow trends and models pioneered by others – another mainstay of Indian companies – fashion. These fashion followers do good job of effective dessimination of new proven technologies. They survive dynamic competition by being a little more fashionable than the neighbor and at least creating an image of being so (check out any soaps/shampoo/food items in a mall, none is special but all survive virtually on price fights and emotional gullibility of the consumer).

So the question is what happens to real need that comes up from the potential consumer side? The latter is an interesting concept – will a potential consumer base develop unless it knows there will be a future company to solve its needs? Nonetheless, back to the question. Conventional companies wont touch or care about these needs. Fashion followers wont care unless the satisfying of the demand becomes a fashion. Who will care? Only stake holders are the needy, the government/politician who cares for his/her sustainability in the hands of the needy and some quirky entrepreneurs who look at short term profits driven by hearsay technologies (India is a big market for these passionate individuals and their tricks). In risk taking cultures, there are people who care about such new needs – the original makers. These could be risk-friendly companies, individuals, groups of friends who connect on projects.

But how do these people get into all this? Given the companies functioning listed above, its so hard to do business? That’s another set of model-innovation one has to do in this space. Government funds and venture capitalists play a significant role here. They pump in seed capital into the venture, expect the venture to be sustainable in some time and on its own, and in case of VC and bank loans, expect decent returns. All fine, provided the potential consumer base has paying capacity, or is in such large numbers that all costs are recovered through mass manufacture and so on. What if all this is not true?

Government and government innovation labs, educational institutions and NGOs are the last bet. They try nonetheless to address the needs of a non-profitable market – a market companies wont touch. Examples?

Q: How do we know history?

History could be simplified as the narrative of investigations into our shared past, so that we may know what was there in those times. Why we do so, is an interesting question but pondering on that for later. How we know the history – this is a very relevant question. Mostly we know it through stories of people, their social hierarchies and roles, places that are relevant to the narratives and so on. But then anyone can make up stories? Which one is truer than the other? That’s the science of history, finding out the truth or the closest approximation possible. And how does this happen? One looks for evidence of text or materials from the time periods of interest. Why materials? Because they last longer and in better forms than non-material information such as stories and myths. Or is it? The material artifacts also are associated with the technological developments and tools of the times and point to the users’s social lives. The field of archaeology could be very interesting to discuss in this light, but i am no archaeologist sadly so should pass on here.

So, one major aspect of our historical knowledge, even the very local and personal, are the materials and traces left behind by our past. Forts, artifacts, shipwrecks, ruins, paper, manuscripts on papyrus and all sorts of things. All these were made by someone, a maker. Our history is full of it. Human civilization’s tool making and modifying natural materials to adapt to our needs is the key difference between humans and other animals.

So who were the ancient makers? The stoneage tool makers, the hut makers, decorative pieces that were traded and traders who dealt with makers and users, the line often not so stark as of today. So here we may present a list of makers, but whats the point apart from academic exercise? Instead lets identify and justify makers and see how vast our definition is. But whats the definition? – A maker is one who responds to a need, emotional, physical, survival by modifying available materials around it to somehow satisfy that need.

• Artisan
• hunter?
• saints and philosophers?
• moms?
• …

We are all makers by default. We always make up things. There’s so much uncertainty and lack of first hand knowledge around us right now that we couldn’t possible survive the panic and trauma of the moment, unless we have faith. Now that’s a dangerous word tossed in the sanctity of a scientific and technical discussion. But if you look underneath your understanding of the world, faith wont seem as alien as its made out to be, weather we like it or now. Imagine me totally depending on Newton (and Einstein’s) description of gravity when i am free falling off a cliff. I could calculate the time required from the tip of the cliff from where i jump off too the bottom of the cliff, and hopefully open a parachute in the right time. I am sure its as predictable as possible and nothing more is needed. All fine, only problem is i have never done this experiment, i know nothing about parachutes. Yet i am assured by a huge lot of fellow species that the above will be mostly true, asking me to ‘trust’ them. But wait what about people who have done this experiment? Well they too can at the most ask me to trust them. And me being a part of this society has faith in them, because finding out for myself will be hell lot difficult, dangerous and i don’t have so much time. This argument, faith, could be extended to millions of information we have and use in our daily lives. And in this light, summing up, either we rely on faith on what others say, OR we use our imagination to ‘make-up’ gaps in our ‘faith-on-other’s’ information. And we make up a lot, really a lot. So we are all makers.

However, to narrow down, lets say we are talking only about makers who make and modify material objects rather than imaginary ones. Then, the list of makers decrease.

• Painter: What need does a painter satisfy? An emotional one? it uses the emotional needs as a source to express using colors, graphics and so on. Certain choices of colors represent the emotional requirements better than others, and there is a certain way in which the movement of the brush can render better. An experience of the painters comes in to say what may look conventional and what may not. There are so many layers of emotion, thought, expertise, skills, lack of skills and ambition to make up for the lack of skills that go into a painter’s work. Definitely a maker!
• Cricketer? Well, it uses man years of hard work and skills and technique and knowledge and emotions to do what it does. But it does not necessarily modify materials around to respond to its needs, unless like ball tampering or polishing one side of the seam to swing the ball or flattening the cricket pitch to reduce uncertainty and so on.
• A blog writer? Well again, lot of thoughts and effort, creating a lot of content, but not modifying materials. Hence not so much a maker in the narrow definition discussed above.

So who are we in this maker class?

Who’s the instructor?

What is the plan of the course?

Declaration of Assignment 1: Write a 500*5 = 2500 word essay on the role of technology, your personal perspective, on theses aspects A) The human social/political world B) On nature C) Rich/poor divide in this world D) Gender divide in this world and E) Role of technology in your personal life. Each of these aspects will have A) Description B) Pros C) Cons and D) Future aspects.