On Making

I was a Blue Peter, a Look and Learn, child. I dutifully sent off milk bottle tops for the various appeals. I made things out of salvaged cardboard and (unbranded) fablon, sellotape and copydex. I built airfix kits, covered in finger prints and smudged camouflage, and suspended them on thread above my desk. As I got older, with the encouragement of my mother, a chemist by original training, I messed with my chemistry kits, and when clear of adult supervision tried to create explosions and 'special effects'. I collected and attempted to preserve natural history specimens.

But, I was not a particularly practical child. I was never very good at these hobby occupations. I preferred books, and my inclination was then, and remains, to the more abstract. I still very occasionally build small electronic kits and models, though I spend vastly more time buying tools and components than actually in construction.

The experience of making however, common to children brought up in the 60s and 70s, influenced me profoundly. Though I think I would always have been a scientist I might not have become an engineer without this experience. Certainly for me engineering and making have always been intimately intertwined.

I now enter into the risky terrain of cultural commentary, consequently everything that follows should be viewed with a sceptical eye. My sense is that making has become less a part of children's lives, supplanted by better television, games consoles and other entertainment. Also perhaps by a change in the way houses are furnished and used. I say this not to condemn but simply to observe a larger social trend.

I believe that students who have not had an opportunity to make and play, who have not had the opportunity to express their creativity through making, will not be inclined to study engineering, or will be limited as engineers.

The maker revival or reboot (evidenced through hack spaces, Make magazine, boingboing, instructables, and so on) and the rediscovery of the joys of making stuff in the garden shed, of 'bodging' and the like, is one I strongly associate with. The sense that making is part of the zeitgeist and has a sort of nerdy 'cool' about it, is I believe profoundly important for engineering (I do worry by saying this I might have inadvertently jinxed it). The development of a hip and self-confident maker community in which techniques, tools and knowledge are shared is central to this. Particularly exciting are the points of fusion of the maker community with the programmer / hacker community. Other links to art, architecture and to fashion are also possible through the common ground of making.

It is vital that engineers engage with and support this revival. It is vital too that we collectively acknowledge that making stands alongside modelling and experimentation as one of the key ingredients of our discipline.