Draft Craft Manifesto and Reflections on Designing a Self-made Rocket

I think the Do-it-yourself (DIY) movement is an interesting and growing movement in the U.S. As we talked about in class on Tuesday about how the trend for making and creating objects in societies has reversed itself. In medieval times, creating objects was not valued as the pursuit of knowledge was the most important human endeavour, whereas in current times, creating objects is for the rich and those who have the time to make their own creations. I think our exercise yesterday in class which involved creating our own self-propelled rockets taught me several important lessons about the DIY movement. One does acquire a sense of satisfaction after making something from scratch, because the process of designing something enables one to place his or her own personal stamp on the object. Our class could have very well bought one of these self-propelled rockets and experimented with how they were assembled but this exercise would have little to no educational value, but education is about the process of ideas and personal creativity. As Marc Frouanfelder from Make magazine stated on the NPR radio show about the current movement of DIY, "There is value in one's personal creation, because it is there own." I believe this is true. I learned alot from assembling and customizing something of my own. I can see that that DIY also has value, because as Frouanfelder implied, people gain satisfication about creating objects as well as giving these creations to other people. This process of giving a personally-made object is like, as Frouanfelder said, "transferring creativity from one to another which is rewarding."

This activity of making a personally-crafted self-propelled rocket has inspired me to take on more DIY projects. I think DIY and its ideology grants people freedom to express themselves, because they do not have to be restricted by what a manufactures has produced. Our discussion about what does one buy the when they purchase an item from a manufacturer is pertinent for this subject, because I think this the idea of freedom that DIY provides is at the core of the intrinisic value of this movement. I felt liberated to create and mold something of my own, and gained personal satisfaction in knowing that created something.

I believe this ideology carries over to Second Life as well. I believe people enjoy this game, because they have the ability to mold a character in their own likeness or the likeness of any creature in the world. This parallel can also be seen in those who write programs for Linux as well because people gain satisfaction in the process of writing their own programs outside of Microsoft and Macintosh.