Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone in Welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says from
Speaker 1: my heart and from my hands, why don't people understand
Speaker 1: my intentions? I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Laurenc and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to talk a bit about maker
Speaker 1: fair and invention and d I Y and inventiveness. We
Speaker 1: we talked about this in our last podcast that we're
Speaker 1: really going to kind of concentrate on the fun, wacky
Speaker 1: stuff that you can see. Um, sometimes stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: have any practical application, but I should that matter who cares? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maker affairs really all about the spirit of do it
Speaker 1: yourself work, and it's also all about expression. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be Hey, I built this amazing
Speaker 1: robot that can climb trees, and maybe one day it'll
Speaker 1: have this practical application. It's more about look at this
Speaker 1: amazing idea I had and the implementation of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one point I wanted to make in the video
Speaker 1: and I think we should make here also is that
Speaker 1: it's sort of an artificial distinction that between the like
Speaker 1: just the fun inventions and the really practical inventions. On
Speaker 1: one hand, yes, in the moment, like you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to use a fire breathing wolf for
Speaker 1: anything all that useful, but the process speak for yourself, Joe, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, for for Lauren's robotic reenactment of Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: a fire breathing dire wolf is key. I like that
Speaker 1: you specify it's a dire wolf and not just like
Speaker 1: a gray wolf. Well, yeah, very important. Uh what was
Speaker 1: I saying? You're saying that the practical it's the same spirit.
Speaker 1: And as we talked about in our previous podcast, the
Speaker 1: two modes of invention feed into each other. Yes, tinkering
Speaker 1: around with stuff just for fun can can lead into
Speaker 1: some really terrific useful inventions, and the other way around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Maker Fair usually ends up looking like a really
Speaker 1: kind of crazy art festival combined with like performance space
Speaker 1: performance are There's a little bit of Burning Man kind
Speaker 1: of going on there, and there really is. It's also
Speaker 1: very kid friendly. They also have a host a lot
Speaker 1: of like at the out in San Francisco and that
Speaker 1: they had like a soldering tent that you could anyone
Speaker 1: could line up and go in and learn how to
Speaker 1: solder stuff. There's usually um a lot of of work
Speaker 1: around specific emerging technologies, like three D printing really became
Speaker 1: something beyond what just the hobbyists knew about. Through maker Fair,
Speaker 1: you know, you would see maker Fair hosting these these
Speaker 1: groups that we're making their own three D printers, which
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I'm sure everyone who's listening to
Speaker 1: this they're familiar with the idea. But just in ace,
Speaker 1: a three D printer uses plastic and very very very
Speaker 1: thin layers to build objects from well the ground up
Speaker 1: is kind of a way I'm saying. It's added manufacturing.
Speaker 1: You're only putting in what you need for whatever the
Speaker 1: final build is. And it's really useful for stuff like
Speaker 1: in manufacturing. It's useful for prototyping. Right, So you come
Speaker 1: up with a design, you design it on a computer.
Speaker 1: You don't know if this design actually is going to
Speaker 1: work in the real world. You need to make a
Speaker 1: prototype of it, so you send this three D model
Speaker 1: to a three D printer. Yeah, if you do it
Speaker 1: with a three D printer, then you can get a
Speaker 1: model in a very short amount of time and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about h an error in the
Speaker 1: machining process. You know, it's engineering a sculptor or yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to sculpt it first, and then you know,
Speaker 1: it cuts out a lot of steps and it also
Speaker 1: cuts down on waste, and then you can see if
Speaker 1: your prototype works well. In the d I Y sphere,
Speaker 1: people are using three D printers to build parts for
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. So we've seen some really cool
Speaker 1: applications of that. Not to mention, we've seen some really
Speaker 1: interesting actual three D printers being built by people who
Speaker 1: show up at maker Fair and they say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: here's our three D printer. We designed it this way,
Speaker 1: and uh. There are a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: working on open source projects that with the goal being
Speaker 1: that ultimately you have a printer that can more or
Speaker 1: less print itself or at least most parts. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It can't print itself assembled, but it can prints to
Speaker 1: the point. You know, in most cases, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about with three D printers is that you're printing out
Speaker 1: pieces that you would then assemble into a final overall
Speaker 1: piece moving parts. Yeah, or just as very inexpensive three
Speaker 1: D printers, some of them, you know, like around three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars or under run around there. Yeah, that's crazy three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we're talking about stuff that used to be in
Speaker 1: the twenty thousand fifty dollar range. Yeah. Now, the ones
Speaker 1: I was looking at maker Fair that are three hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: these are the really basic ones. So they're they're small,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to get the level of size
Speaker 1: or resolution you get with a bigger, more expensive printer. Right,
Speaker 1: the layers that you can do it for that amount
Speaker 1: of money, that blows my mind, right, And there there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different examples of stuff. Now I've
Speaker 1: actually been to a maker Fair event, but it was
Speaker 1: one that was hosted here in Atlanta at Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1: It's a much smaller scale than the ones you see
Speaker 1: in New York and San Francisco. There's even there's a
Speaker 1: big one that happens in Detroit and around the world too.
Speaker 1: They've got them globally now, right, yeah, so it's beyond
Speaker 1: just uh, those those cities. The one here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: was again a smaller scale, but it was and it
Speaker 1: was mostly dominated by robotics, which not a big surprise.
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech. Yeah, that's an engineering school, so there was
Speaker 1: quite a bit from them, though, a lot of the
Speaker 1: cool stuff I've seen from maker Fair has been robotics oriented, right,
Speaker 1: the steel wolf that can blete fires, wireless control, robot giraffe,
Speaker 1: robotic bartender, mixed drinks for you. Yeah, there's the walking pod.
Speaker 1: Did you see? This is the walking pod? Was? Uh?
Speaker 1: It's it's a moving spider like device. It's essentially the
Speaker 1: pod is large enough to camp in, because that's what
Speaker 1: the guy was sleeping in while he originally took it
Speaker 1: to burning Man, but he also took it to make
Speaker 1: it fair. Um. It has uh, I think twelve legs,
Speaker 1: so six in front, six in the back, and it
Speaker 1: moves fairly slowly, but it uses to ninety volt half
Speaker 1: horsepower electric motors to move its legs and it crawls
Speaker 1: along and looks like it's the stuff out of Nightmares.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty interesting. Um. I've seen also a lot
Speaker 1: of different sculptures and kinetic sculptures and flame producing sculptures.
Speaker 1: Flames are really popular and Mega Fair. Anything that can
Speaker 1: shoot fire automatically gets a big response from the crowd.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you one of my favorite things I've seen? Please? Oh?
Speaker 1: I loved it the Architect act singing Tesla coil. I've
Speaker 1: actually seen these in person. Architect has has traveled around,
Speaker 1: They've they appeared on one of those, um like America's
Speaker 1: Got Talent type shows. I remember they were on one
Speaker 1: of those as well. But Architect, Yeah, they used Tesla
Speaker 1: coils to generate this high voltage electricity and then they
Speaker 1: can create these audible frequencies of electricity and change the
Speaker 1: pitch of that based upon the voltage. Music. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: it seems like the key is that they're using solid
Speaker 1: state Tesla coils, which you can manipulate digitally. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So if you can program a synthesizer or any kind
Speaker 1: of digital music producer to communicate with that Tesla coil,
Speaker 1: you can get it to spark a note, and so
Speaker 1: you can program in any kind of song you want.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and when it sparks, you hear the sound.
Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, they appeared at a Dragon Con a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and uh, they quickly won over the
Speaker 1: crowd by playing famous sign fiction themes like the Doctor Doctor,
Speaker 1: Yeah there's and if you wanted you get in the cage. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the cage that. They didn't do these
Speaker 1: versions right. Yeah, they've got a they've got a fair
Speaker 1: day cage that they'll put in the center of this.
Speaker 1: A fair day cage, of course, being something that will
Speaker 1: that will conduct electricity around an object rather than frying
Speaker 1: it directly. Um, and that's an oversimplification, right, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the same sort of thing that people have suggested
Speaker 1: movie theaters installed so that you can't get any cell
Speaker 1: phone reception within a movie theater. That just could put
Speaker 1: the whole movie theater within a fair day cage and
Speaker 1: then you don't have to worry about people checking their
Speaker 1: phones all the time. Actually, yeah, I would totally approve
Speaker 1: of that, other than you know, in case of emergency.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so they'll have this fair day cage
Speaker 1: up on stage and they can let so let a
Speaker 1: member of the audience go up and stand in it
Speaker 1: and and have all of the electricity sparks from the
Speaker 1: Tesla coils going directly onto the surface of the case.
Speaker 1: They've also created special suits that you can wear that
Speaker 1: Now granted they don't let audience members volunteer and wear this,
Speaker 1: that they have had a member of architect wearing this
Speaker 1: suit where they it looks like they are shooting lightning
Speaker 1: from their hands. I've seen them use that in particular
Speaker 1: for a moving rendition of the Imperial March from Star Wars.
Speaker 1: The Empiress tricks back, which makes sense, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can show you the video after this. All this is
Speaker 1: on YouTube, by the way, Just go on YouTube and
Speaker 1: check out Architect. I'm sorry, I want musical Palpatine in
Speaker 1: my life so much. That's so, that's at I'll send
Speaker 1: you the link so you can at least move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the lightning, the force lightning, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Joe's caught up. Uh yeah, No, you didn't mention before
Speaker 1: you were talking about force lightning. No, you're right, I
Speaker 1: didn't mention force lightning, but that was exactly what I
Speaker 1: was thinking. Yeah, yeah, just like I was like thinking
Speaker 1: about Palpatine. I was just thinking about the empire, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was thinking of the Emperor in particular.
Speaker 1: But yes, that is that is the case. So but
Speaker 1: they they and I'm one episode, are not one episode.
Speaker 1: One performance that Architect was at the had one of
Speaker 1: our distant colleagues join in, and uh and I remember
Speaker 1: that there their um profile shot up after this because
Speaker 1: grant Amhara of the MythBusters was on stage and he
Speaker 1: was the one put in the Faraday cage during the
Speaker 1: architect performance. And actually grand Amahara, he's a good example
Speaker 1: of one of the people who often participates in these
Speaker 1: kind of events. So does Adam Savage. He's actually done
Speaker 1: several like keynote addresses at maker Fairs to talk about
Speaker 1: the spirit of invention and making and this idea of inventing. Uh.
Speaker 1: They both of them are known for their inventions. I mean,
Speaker 1: Granda Mahara is probably better known for building robots for
Speaker 1: robot battle type things, but Adam Savage has done. If
Speaker 1: you do an Adam Savage search for Adam Savage and
Speaker 1: Maker Fair, you're gonna see a whole bunch of different
Speaker 1: talks that he's given and are really inspiring about the
Speaker 1: spirit of making, the spirit of going like, I want
Speaker 1: to put this thing together. How does it do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says. He says, I want everyone to go out
Speaker 1: there and fail big, fail better. The idea being that
Speaker 1: don't let someone telling you that you know the thing
Speaker 1: you want to do is impossible stop you from doing it,
Speaker 1: because you know you don't really know it's impossible until
Speaker 1: you've given it your absolute best, and even then, you
Speaker 1: know you might you could prove it wrong. So um
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. For for the generalized record, the
Speaker 1: maker Fair debuted in two thousands six, I believe, and
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and and as we have said, has
Speaker 1: gone global since then. It gets bigger every year. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of our colleagues out in San Francisco
Speaker 1: cover this every single year when when they three and
Speaker 1: uh like Texilla and all those kids have some really great,
Speaker 1: really great videos and coverage. One of my favorite things
Speaker 1: that came out of it was not really it wasn't
Speaker 1: even a huge head turning invention. You know. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like a fire breathing wolf for a giant walking pod.
Speaker 1: It was a concept that really just encourages that whole
Speaker 1: sense of innovation and an invention, which is the nerdy Derby.
Speaker 1: So they the nerdy Derby. So, uh, Joe, were you
Speaker 1: ever a cub scout? Yeah? You do? You remember the
Speaker 1: Pinewood Derby races. I did not participate in those, but
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. You make a box
Speaker 1: car that has no engine, rolls down a hill. It's
Speaker 1: a slot car race essentially, so, but it has very
Speaker 1: specific rules like your your your car has to fit
Speaker 1: within a certain set of parameters. It can't be too small,
Speaker 1: it can't be too light, it has to fit within
Speaker 1: a certain nitro no nitro yeah yeah no no no
Speaker 1: uh oil slicks or weird spy hunter technology, but no,
Speaker 1: mostly it's turtle shells or stars. I think we've covered
Speaker 1: all of the variations now. But it has. The point
Speaker 1: is it has rules. Nerdy Derby does not, So nerdy
Speaker 1: Derby's like twisted metal up in there. Well not really,
Speaker 1: because it's still it's still not although there's no rule
Speaker 1: about I mean, it's still a slot car race, right,
Speaker 1: so it's still you're still putting it in a little,
Speaker 1: uh predetermined track. So the goal is still to get
Speaker 1: down to the end of that track faster than the
Speaker 1: competing cars. But you can use heat seeking missiles technically,
Speaker 1: I suppose so um. I don't know how you would
Speaker 1: implement that in a way that would be safe. I
Speaker 1: think you can't do anything that would kill anybody. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's called no rules manage your car building, Mr Semantics.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's it's it's done out of n y
Speaker 1: u H, it's out of their interactive telecommunications program. Actually
Speaker 1: and UM, the you can either design and build your
Speaker 1: car and then bring it there to race, or if
Speaker 1: you really want to, you can just show up and
Speaker 1: build your car while you're there and then race it.
Speaker 1: I saw some really interesting designs in a video showing
Speaker 1: it off, and uh and I like this idea because again,
Speaker 1: it's not like a huge invention that captures everyone's imagination.
Speaker 1: It's more like continuing to uh to to inspire this
Speaker 1: innovative spirit and others. UM, probably the best invention I saw,
Speaker 1: at least as far as I'm concerned. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are lots of great ones, amazing inventions, but the one
Speaker 1: that I saw where I thought I want to try
Speaker 1: this out was actually created by a bunch of high
Speaker 1: school students, which already blew my mind. It was high
Speaker 1: school students who built a flight simulator that has two
Speaker 1: axes of movement and three sixty degrees of freedom within
Speaker 1: those two axes, meaning that you can rotate in essentially
Speaker 1: every direction, so you can do barrel rolls, or you
Speaker 1: can do loop the loops in this thing, and all
Speaker 1: combinations thereof. And it's called the Viper. The reason it's
Speaker 1: called the Viper is it's inspired by Bell Star Galactica,
Speaker 1: so it's named after the ship, the vie, the type
Speaker 1: of ship in the Bell Start Galactica, the Viper, and
Speaker 1: so uh they developed everything about this flight simulator, including
Speaker 1: you know, they used tools that already pre existed. They
Speaker 1: used an open sore flight simulator to be the basis
Speaker 1: of the flight simulator part, but they had to program
Speaker 1: their own skin on top of it. In their own uh.
Speaker 1: They had to to map the movements of this physical
Speaker 1: flight simulator to the game they have. Are all these
Speaker 1: are Dueno modules that are controlling basic elements of this,
Speaker 1: including uh, set dressing. They created set dressing of all
Speaker 1: these blinky lights to give you more of a feeling
Speaker 1: that you're inside the cockpit of a spaceship. And they
Speaker 1: use three computer displays to be your your windows, so
Speaker 1: they're you know, it's like you're looking out into space
Speaker 1: and you have a joystick and a thruster that are
Speaker 1: your your actual physical controls and a control panel that
Speaker 1: lights up so it looks like again that you're inside
Speaker 1: the cockpit of a space spaceship. And uh, and they're
Speaker 1: high school students, like the guy who was talking about
Speaker 1: the Um, the flight simulator was in eighth grade. You know,
Speaker 1: high school students who have built something that when I
Speaker 1: saw it, I thought I would pay good money to
Speaker 1: have a run in that point. I would love to
Speaker 1: take that for a flight. But that's the kind of
Speaker 1: spirit we're talking about. Is this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: if I were back when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: if someone had told me that, you know, I could
Speaker 1: get with a bunch of my friends and build a
Speaker 1: flight simulator that had all these degrees of movement and everything,
Speaker 1: and I would have thought they were crazy. I would
Speaker 1: have said, I'm really busy watching cartoon sushi. Can can
Speaker 1: you get back to me later? Yeah, So my high
Speaker 1: school experience was different because I was thinking tiny tunes. Anyway,
Speaker 1: similar similar experience, just different different content. Uh. But there
Speaker 1: were a lot of other projects that I looked at
Speaker 1: that I like. I like the pancake Bought. Did you
Speaker 1: guys see this? I think that familiar Pancake Bought was
Speaker 1: made out of you guys know that. You know Lego
Speaker 1: makes these kits where you can get robotics. Yeah, it's got.
Speaker 1: It comes with a a programmable module that you can
Speaker 1: you can use. It has a very simple computer programming
Speaker 1: language that comes with it, or you can even use
Speaker 1: more complex languages. If you want to think what tiny
Speaker 1: remote control planetary rover made from a Lego Mindstorms kit.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. We've we've actually saw some robot battles
Speaker 1: here in the office during a Christmas party that were
Speaker 1: run by these these um these modules. Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: Miguel Valezuela built a Lego robot that makes pancakes. And
Speaker 1: what it does. What it does, there's a griddle that
Speaker 1: it is built around, so there's a griddle in the center,
Speaker 1: and then you have a moving arm that holds a
Speaker 1: squeeze bottle of pancake batter, and the moving arm can
Speaker 1: squeeze the bottle, uh with just enough force to get
Speaker 1: exactly the amount of pancake batter you need to make
Speaker 1: whatever kind of pancake you want. And you can program
Speaker 1: different patterns in so you can make pancakes of different shapes.
Speaker 1: So there was a video where he was making them
Speaker 1: essentially in Mickey Mouse shapes, but then also in other
Speaker 1: more complex shapes, and it was really entertaining and that
Speaker 1: was just a cute little project that was the you know, again,
Speaker 1: no real practical use. You would be a way easier
Speaker 1: for you to make a pancake just by putting batter
Speaker 1: directly on the griddle. In a way, we're kind of
Speaker 1: talking about the same sort of spirit that we see
Speaker 1: in Rube Goldberg devices. Right well, I mean some of
Speaker 1: these things though they seem kind of silly, but they
Speaker 1: have a surprising functionality. Like um, I mentioned the robot
Speaker 1: bartender earlier, So okay, you can make your own drinks whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. It seems like it's just for fun. But
Speaker 1: one thing that's cool I noticed about the robot bartender
Speaker 1: is it can make you a drink with the correct
Speaker 1: proportions of everything in any size you want, right right,
Speaker 1: So you can have a one ounce Manhattan or a
Speaker 1: or a seven ounce Manhattan, and it's all the same
Speaker 1: to the machine. It's just you know, you're saying, you're
Speaker 1: it's plugging in mathematically the proportions of what it's serving
Speaker 1: to you exactly, so you can make yourself an extremely
Speaker 1: tiny or an extremely large cocktail. Uh. And it does
Speaker 1: the same no matter what whereas people are using these
Speaker 1: like you know, oh and I have a shot glass,
Speaker 1: and right right, I need one part of this to
Speaker 1: four parts of that to two parts of this other stuff,
Speaker 1: whereas this thing can do all the math and make it,
Speaker 1: make it like the mathematically perfect cocktail, right right, And
Speaker 1: if you put that in say an industrial kitchen or
Speaker 1: or in some kind of chemistry lab, then that could
Speaker 1: have definite applications beyond getting people drank. Yeah, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I could see if people could even make a lot
Speaker 1: of money getting people drank off of it. Right. They
Speaker 1: put one of these in a t G I Fridays
Speaker 1: and it's serving up drinks three times fast. Well, you
Speaker 1: think about it, it's it's kind of it's kind of
Speaker 1: the alcoholic version of those crazy soft drink dispensers that
Speaker 1: you can get now, where you get the hundred different
Speaker 1: flavors out of one soft drink dispenser. Um. Yeah, suicide machine, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly, by the way, suicide For those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know, we're talking about the kind of drink
Speaker 1: where you just mix everything together to get whatever it
Speaker 1: was that the Yeah, but do they all because now
Speaker 1: when I hear suicide machine, I think drama and I
Speaker 1: think they're both joyful. Yeah, that's true. At least Binder
Speaker 1: seemed to get a kick out of both. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there. There are other great examples. Oh there's one
Speaker 1: that was more of on the artistic side than on
Speaker 1: the them mechanical engineering side. And I wanted to get
Speaker 1: your your your reaction to this, although really to get
Speaker 1: a true reaction you have to watch the video to
Speaker 1: see how disturbing this is. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: can paint a picture of how creepy I found this
Speaker 1: particular exhibit to be. But it's called the I Want
Speaker 1: To Project by I Wu Kong who created this interactive exhibit.
Speaker 1: And the exhibit what does is it pulls in Twitter Uh, well,
Speaker 1: tweets I guess you would say, uh that have either
Speaker 1: the phrase I want to or I have to included
Speaker 1: in them. So it just it doesn't search essentially on
Speaker 1: Twitter every so often and pulls in tweets that have
Speaker 1: these phrases in it. You get robotic voice that reads
Speaker 1: this out. There's actually a monitor that shows this in
Speaker 1: really low resolution the actual tweets. So think of like
Speaker 1: a like nineteen eighties era computer where you get that
Speaker 1: really primitive looking text, you know, the low rest and
Speaker 1: it's a robotic voice that kind of hearkens back to
Speaker 1: that as well, and green text. No, it's actually light blue,
Speaker 1: light blue text, um twit sure. But it also has
Speaker 1: this little army of tiny little robots that all look
Speaker 1: identical that are are on uh there, each on a
Speaker 1: stationary little pedestal, so they don't walk around or anything,
Speaker 1: but they all look kind of like, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like a puppet would if you just let go
Speaker 1: of the strings and it kind of slumps over. So
Speaker 1: imagine all these little slumped over figures. The machine reads
Speaker 1: out the tweet and then all the figures slowly move
Speaker 1: around for about ten seconds in kind of what looks
Speaker 1: to be a pretty random fast and then they stopped
Speaker 1: moving until it reads out the next one, and then
Speaker 1: they all move and then they stopped moving. The idea
Speaker 1: behind this was actually that cong was saying, when you
Speaker 1: say I want to or you say I have to,
Speaker 1: how much of that is an internal thought versus the
Speaker 1: kind of pressures you received from external sources like society
Speaker 1: and culture, like I want to get married. How much
Speaker 1: of that is from actually you, like you as a person,
Speaker 1: as opposed to what society expects you to do. And
Speaker 1: so this idea was every time it says I want
Speaker 1: to it's or it says, I have to you have
Speaker 1: this crowd of robots that all move together, suggesting that
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't something that actually originates from within yourself,
Speaker 1: but rather is something that is influenced by and that
Speaker 1: and and uh boy, you know, I know it sounds
Speaker 1: like the nightmares of Day McKean. I mean, honestly, that
Speaker 1: sounds terrifying. As you know, my sister is a professional puppeteer,
Speaker 1: so I've seen some really kind of in a native
Speaker 1: crazy theater that's all puppetry based, and some of the
Speaker 1: stuff is really effective, especially the things that kind of
Speaker 1: make you feel disassociated with what it is to be human.
Speaker 1: And it's just a sort of odd, uncanny valley kind
Speaker 1: of feeling. This is what that that kind of gave
Speaker 1: me this feeling here. And the robots, by the way,
Speaker 1: they don't look like people. They look like little robots.
Speaker 1: I mean they don't you know, the heads are more
Speaker 1: rectangular than round, you know that kind of thing. Humanity
Speaker 1: is an illusion. Yeah, yeah, so, but it was, but
Speaker 1: it was an interesting kid. It was. It was very
Speaker 1: much more of an artistic expression than um, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a feat of engineering, not that it can't
Speaker 1: be both. No, that's interesting. So what is the future
Speaker 1: of stuff like this, the sort of the home design,
Speaker 1: the d I Y, the hobbyist inventure and inventor mentality. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's interesting that um a year after
Speaker 1: maker Fares really got off the ground. Um, And in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, indie go go was founded, and a
Speaker 1: couple years later, in two thousand nine, Kickstarter was founded. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And these organizations are businesses, I suppose are are very
Speaker 1: much into promoting the work of people like this and
Speaker 1: and making it financially feasible. Yeah, promoting or enabling. Yeah. There.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of stats here just about the
Speaker 1: kind of amazing success people can have with crowdfunding. One
Speaker 1: of the things I found on Kickstarter was one of
Speaker 1: their highest earning things, the Oculus Rift. I've talked about
Speaker 1: that before. That's the the headset that allows you to
Speaker 1: get sort of a three D first person view of
Speaker 1: virtual world. So it's kind of like what we think
Speaker 1: of when we hear the phrase virtual reality. And Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you've used one of these, and I did. It was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It was really cool. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: amazing there. And the Oculus Rift is One of the
Speaker 1: things that the promise is that it will be able
Speaker 1: to work with multiple systems, so that it's being talked
Speaker 1: about being used for gaming. Yeah, mostly for gaming, Like
Speaker 1: you could see it being used for other applications as well,
Speaker 1: but as a gaming element, I could see it being
Speaker 1: really cool. I mean, I had fun playing in a
Speaker 1: in a fairly primitive world. It was. It was designed
Speaker 1: so that it would give you this experience of being
Speaker 1: in a you know, this first person perspective, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a um like a graphically rich world. But
Speaker 1: the Oculus Rift can do that, so you know, imagine
Speaker 1: being able to run around. One of the top games
Speaker 1: like the one I want to play in is Skyrim
Speaker 1: I wanna or LD Scrolls I want to run around
Speaker 1: and gorgeous if yeah, if you ever play any of
Speaker 1: these these games on on the current generation or the
Speaker 1: next generation systems, the level of detail and the artistry
Speaker 1: that goes into level design and world design is really impressive.
Speaker 1: And it's one thing to see that from you know,
Speaker 1: a third person perspective behind a character, or even a
Speaker 1: first person perspective, but you're still looking at a screen.
Speaker 1: It's another thing to feel completely immersed in that world,
Speaker 1: and you develop a level of appreciation for the skill
Speaker 1: of the artists who designed this thing that goes well
Speaker 1: beyond just wow, that's a pretty game. So the Oculus
Speaker 1: Rift on Kickstarter crowd crowdfunded right, asked for two dollars,
Speaker 1: got two million, four hundred and thirty seven thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty nine dollars. Another another simple, little little
Speaker 1: tech project, the pebble E paper Watch Minds on order,
Speaker 1: huge hit. They asked for a hundred thousand dollars, got
Speaker 1: ten point two million. Yeah, part of that was that,
Speaker 1: you know, the way Kickstarter works is you know, for
Speaker 1: for someone who creates a project, they're supposed to create
Speaker 1: rewards that go along with that project. So if you
Speaker 1: contribute at a certain level, you should expect to receive
Speaker 1: a certain reward for your for your investment, your contribution.
Speaker 1: Really it's not an investment. They're very careful that they
Speaker 1: call it that um. So one of the things we
Speaker 1: started to see is that for for groups that are
Speaker 1: putting together an actual product, not just some sort of project,
Speaker 1: like you know, I wouldn't say that a play for example,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to produce a play, I think of
Speaker 1: that as a project, not a product. People fun stuff
Speaker 1: like that, ye, music and theater. And but if it's
Speaker 1: if it's anything that's a physical product of some sort
Speaker 1: or even a digital product of some sort, then generally
Speaker 1: they include that as one of the reward levels. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: in the case of pebble, uh, and in the case
Speaker 1: of most of these, you would get at a certain level,
Speaker 1: you would get a a one of these products, right
Speaker 1: and uh, usually it ends up being a discounted price
Speaker 1: as to compared to what the suggested retail ice will
Speaker 1: be of the finished product. So it gives an incentive
Speaker 1: to people to back a project. You know. Not only
Speaker 1: do people get the satisfaction of backing something that they
Speaker 1: think is really awesome and they want to see it happen,
Speaker 1: but then they can also get paid basically, yeah, pre
Speaker 1: order of something for less money than what it will
Speaker 1: be when it's out, you know, on store shelves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think crowdfunding has been a big hit and
Speaker 1: is going to continue to make UM designing technology, especially
Speaker 1: for the little guy, UM an easier thing. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing I do want to comment on is that I
Speaker 1: think there is started to be and you all might
Speaker 1: agree some backlash against crowdfunding because of things like people
Speaker 1: funding projects and then not getting the stuff that they
Speaker 1: were promised. There are there are a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: it's been abused, I think a little bit, and and
Speaker 1: abuse is maybe a strong word, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: by by the kinds of people who could easily get
Speaker 1: funding for their project X from other sources and it
Speaker 1: winds up flooding, you know, kind of kind of artificially
Speaker 1: inflating the market in a way that I think takes
Speaker 1: attention away from there are smaller people who might not
Speaker 1: be able to get their funding out. There's some people who,
Speaker 1: let's say that you're a person who has an unsuccessful campaign.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those. I I did a campaign on
Speaker 1: Kickstarter that failed to fund. Uh. There are some people
Speaker 1: among that group who say, who blame large like high
Speaker 1: profile projects that already have a crazy following for taking
Speaker 1: away money from smaller projects, as if it's a zero
Speaker 1: sum game. I don't think it's a zero sum game.
Speaker 1: Complicated than that. Absolutely, I don't blame I don't blame
Speaker 1: the fact that my Kickstarter project didn't take off on
Speaker 1: the fact that the Veronica Mars movie was funded. Like
Speaker 1: I don't. It's Kristen Bell's fault. And if if I
Speaker 1: ever run into her, that's fine. You'll like miss Bell.
Speaker 1: Your success has has made it clear that my failure
Speaker 1: is even greater than I think. No, not at all,
Speaker 1: not at all, um. But you know that's one one aspect.
Speaker 1: Then they're there are other ones like uh. One that
Speaker 1: was a little controversial, which is not a big surprise
Speaker 1: because these guys deal in controversy all the time is
Speaker 1: the Penny Arcade Kickstarter. They're only Kickstarter campaign in order
Speaker 1: to uh run Penny Arcade ad free for a year.
Speaker 1: I think was the full like if they hit all
Speaker 1: their stretch goals. It was a full year of Penny
Speaker 1: Arcade with no ads on the page. And there there
Speaker 1: were people who said, that's not really what kickstarters for
Speaker 1: now that's that may be true, but Kickstarter has to
Speaker 1: approve every project before it's it's featured on Kickstarter, or
Speaker 1: else you don't get a project. So ultimately, someone at
Speaker 1: Kickstarter said, this is a perfectly acceptable use of our service.
Speaker 1: And and whether that's because having folks like Penny Arcade,
Speaker 1: an Amanda Palmer and Kristen bell Um promoting Kickstarter or
Speaker 1: whether it's really the most appropriate project for the site
Speaker 1: is an argument that I will not make here because
Speaker 1: it would You can also if you're if you're really cynical,
Speaker 1: then you say, well, the white Kickstarter makes its money
Speaker 1: is by getting a percentage of however much the person raises,
Speaker 1: and if it's a high profile project, they're going to
Speaker 1: possibly raise way more money, which means more money for
Speaker 1: the company. That's if you're being cynical criticisms aside. I
Speaker 1: do think crowdfunding represents a lot of potential develop Yeah,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't We wouldn't have seen the game console, which
Speaker 1: as we're recording this podcast, it's gonna be a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks before this comes out. But as we're recording it,
Speaker 1: it's just now hitting retailers and has already sold out.
Speaker 1: But the reason why that exists at all is because
Speaker 1: Kickstarter funded it. And that's another example of overfunding where
Speaker 1: I think they got like eight million dollars from Kickstarter
Speaker 1: and they were asking for a hundred thousand. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: As of right now on indiego Go, the skin of
Speaker 1: doo Scout, which is a non invasive biofeedback um It
Speaker 1: can take your temperature, in your heart rate, and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other bio signals from you within ten
Speaker 1: seconds from holding it up to your forehead with your
Speaker 1: thumb and forefinger. Um. And and it's it's being funded
Speaker 1: on Indiego go right now. And I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's being called a triquarter. How crazy is that? Like?
Speaker 1: How and it's you know, it's it's definitely along those lines. Here.
Speaker 1: Here's the question, if you've got a triquarter, why do
Speaker 1: you really need a doctor? Well, you know, because you
Speaker 1: can you can diagnose yourself from home, or you can
Speaker 1: you can say, oh, hey, I'm totally sick from home,
Speaker 1: and then you need to go to a doctor. That's
Speaker 1: kind of like asking. That's asking like if you've got
Speaker 1: web m D, why would you ever go to a doctor?
Speaker 1: Joe web MD. I'm gonna have to start saying this
Speaker 1: every every podcast. You gotta go on the corner and
Speaker 1: sit out the rest of this one. Um, Lauren take
Speaker 1: the axe away from him. Uh X, it's not that's
Speaker 1: just a joke. Lawrence had the X the whole time. Um. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I agree that cloud funding is definitely definitely
Speaker 1: something that will enable future tinkerers to really kind of
Speaker 1: indulge in this, in this innovative spirit. And not all,
Speaker 1: not all projects are going to be ones that are
Speaker 1: going to require crowdfunding. But I think it's a good tool.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to enable a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: And then I'm sorry, go ahead, Well, I was going
Speaker 1: to mention another thing, but did you have something I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say that you made the point in
Speaker 1: our video that also that that the information on just
Speaker 1: the basics inventing and tinkering are out there. You've got
Speaker 1: all sorts of websites that tell you how to do
Speaker 1: various projects, and they can go all the way from
Speaker 1: beginning to you know, the basic elements of soldering and
Speaker 1: and and electronics and welding and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: all the way up to advanced techniques where you're talking
Speaker 1: about fine tuning a really intricate project. Even software online
Speaker 1: and also products like the Raspberry Pie are making things
Speaker 1: like this very easy for people. In fact, that the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of the Raspberry Pie was the guy who
Speaker 1: created that he saw that there was a decreasing amount
Speaker 1: of understanding around basic programming skills because our our technology
Speaker 1: is getting more and more sophisticated and complex, which means
Speaker 1: that there's a higher barrier to learning how it works. Right,
Speaker 1: when you had a very simple computer, relatively speaking, it
Speaker 1: was easier to learn how it worked. It still was
Speaker 1: not like, oh, well, you know together. It's also cheaper
Speaker 1: to build your own in those days than it was
Speaker 1: to buy one pre made, so well, depending upon how
Speaker 1: you're what you're shopping for, that can still be true today.
Speaker 1: Another way of saying it, I would say it's probably
Speaker 1: easier to learn basic than it is to learn C
Speaker 1: plus plus or you know. Well, sure there's that too,
Speaker 1: but so so the Raspberry Pie. As you developed complexity
Speaker 1: and power, you also developed difficulty, right and well. And
Speaker 1: the Raspberry pies purpose was to create a very basic
Speaker 1: computer on a chip that people who were interested in
Speaker 1: programming could play with and learn the basics. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it would be a very uh easy entry level way
Speaker 1: of getting into programming. And I've seen some crazy mods
Speaker 1: for Raspberry Pies, like you know, the basic ones, just
Speaker 1: a chip that you can then hook up to a
Speaker 1: display and then some other things like a keyboard or
Speaker 1: a mouse. Uh, and that's it. But there are people
Speaker 1: who have made their own custom cases for it. There
Speaker 1: are people who are using them in robotics. The same
Speaker 1: thing is true with the Arduino micro controllers, which have
Speaker 1: been used in a lot of different really cool d
Speaker 1: I Y projects. So yeah, the the the tools have
Speaker 1: become uh much more accessible for a much larger audience.
Speaker 1: So I expect the future of tinkering just to go crazy.
Speaker 1: We're gonna see some really creative projects. Yeah. The big
Speaker 1: tool I think here really is three D printers also,
Speaker 1: and the reason that's a big tool, and I want
Speaker 1: to be careful to say what I'm not saying. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying three D printers are going to turn everybody's
Speaker 1: house into a factory that where you're just not going
Speaker 1: to be printing around clothes and food and tables. Johnny
Speaker 1: Johnny put a scratch on the table, so let's just
Speaker 1: print a new one or especially more complex machinery. But
Speaker 1: one thing that I think is really interesting. I was
Speaker 1: watching a video is somebody made uh for maker Fair,
Speaker 1: and they were selling a very cheap, very basic three
Speaker 1: D printer that they've made that was a new low
Speaker 1: cost option, And what they said was they wanted to
Speaker 1: make tools for makers. And I thought, oh, that's really
Speaker 1: interesting because a three D printer is kind of the
Speaker 1: perfect tool for a maker. It allows rapid prototyping, like
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier, in a way that that other
Speaker 1: things don't. You know, if you need a a specially
Speaker 1: shaped molded part to go on the thing you're building, well,
Speaker 1: how would you get that before? I mean you'd probably
Speaker 1: have to like send off to somewhere to make you
Speaker 1: a batch of these. It take longer, be more expensive.
Speaker 1: With a three D printer, you can prototype rapidly in
Speaker 1: your own home, right, Yeah, which is which which makes
Speaker 1: designing that much easier, right because then you know, Adam Savage,
Speaker 1: like we said, you know you say fail big and
Speaker 1: fail better. Well, part of that is this the fact
Speaker 1: that we have created we being you know, engineers have
Speaker 1: created these amazing tools that allow us to try lots
Speaker 1: of different stuff in quick successions. So if you do
Speaker 1: a design and you realize after you've created it and
Speaker 1: you've you've got all the parts that it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: work the way you intended, and that you need to
Speaker 1: tweak that design, it's a lot easier to do that
Speaker 1: now than it was before. So you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about going through the whole prototype process from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, still not knowing if it's going to work,
Speaker 1: and going and making a very wasteful amount of of
Speaker 1: byproduct in the process. So I mean, all of that
Speaker 1: is really pointing towards this amazing future of tinkering and
Speaker 1: expression that I cannot wait to see. Well, that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion about maker fare inventing d I y,
Speaker 1: if any of you guys out there have amazing projects
Speaker 1: that you've worked on. I know that I've I've encountered
Speaker 1: listeners before who have really gotten into this sort of
Speaker 1: scene and they've made some phenomenal stuff. If you have
Speaker 1: participated in these sort of projects, let us know. We
Speaker 1: want to see it, we want to hear about it.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll be happy to mention you on on forward
Speaker 1: Thinking because we've got a real healthy interest in this
Speaker 1: and respect for everybody who really participates. To get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, bunch, you send us an email the
Speaker 1: addresses FW thinking at discovery dot com and go to
Speaker 1: FW thinking dot com. Check out the blogs, the videos,
Speaker 1: the podcasts, and all the articles that we've linked to.
Speaker 1: There's some great stuff out there that I think you
Speaker 1: guys will find really entertaining and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic and
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought
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