I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Anderson’s two earlier works on economics in the Internet age (The Long Tail and Free). Anderson — formerly a tech editor for The Economist — has got a very good grasp of economics and business; but as the long-time editor-in-chief at Wired,
he wasn’t afraid of visionary pronouncements about technology either.
He’s also got a background as an indie rocker, and has a good grasp of
the rewards and challenges of a life in the arts. Though I’ve disagreed pretty vociferously
with some of the things he’s had to say in the past, his work has
provoked more nods from me than head-shakes, and when I’ve disagreed
with him, it’s been for chewy, substantive reasons that were worth
exploring.
I’ve just finished a copy of (Anderson’s) Makers — having come to the book a bit late due to my own book-tour for Pirate Cinema — and it delivered on all the promise of Anderson’s earlier work, and then blew past them. Simply put, Makers
is a thrilling manifesto, a call to arms to quit your day job, pick up
your tools, and change the future of manufacturing and business forever.
It’s a recipe for a heady cocktail of open business; free software;
low-cost, global coordination; and community cooperation that Anderson
credibly suggests will forever change the world.
Anderson’s Makers is a tour through all the different ways that
manufacturing in quantities of 1-10,000 units has been transformed, and
how this changes the very nature of entrepreneurship and creativity.
Using diverse example from modern times — and comparing them with
manufacturing stories from the past century — Anderson shows how 3D
printing, laser-cutting, Internet-based custom fabrication, free and
open development models, and crowdfunding have made it possible to make
something, make it better, sell it, make it better still through
co-development with customers, scale up and up, and serve your needs and
the needs of your community.
He doesn’t gloss over the challenges of this sort of thing, but he does
show how a world where hardware is (nearly) as cheap to prototype and
share as software means that the traditional gatekeepers to creativity
— established manufacturing giants, retail titans, and massive
distributors — are losing their stranglehold on the market. This means
that you can do something that makes your life better, you can turn it
into a business, and others can turn it into a business, too.
Because this is Anderson, this is firmly a business book, and that’s
probably a good thing. Anderson’s bottom-line practicality is likely to
lend the idea of making a certain boardroom credibility that other,
wider-eyed literature on the movement lacks. That said, this, more than
any of Anderson’s books, acknowledges the role that passion, love,
community spirit and personal satisfaction play in the world of
innovation. I was a little disappointed that Free glossed over
the ethical and personal reasons that people worked on free and open
systems, but in this volume Anderson’s much more in touch with his
indie-rock history than in previous outings, and it’s a very welcome
addition.
For all that, there’s still a wide streak of makerish practicality here,
and the chapters are only a few steps away from being full-blown HOWTOs
for doing it yourself (or, more importantly, doing it with everyone
else who cares about the same stuff as you). And Anderson certainly
practices as he preaches: not long after the book’s publication, he quit
his job at Wired to run his DIY Drone business full-time.
This is really Anderson at his finest: a blend of economic big-picture
stuff and nitty-gritty, hands-dirty making. I can see it being a perfect
kick in the bum for any number of frustrated makers struggling in a
crappy economy and wondering where to take their lives.
