Mark R. Hatch - The Maker Revolution: Building a Future on Creativity and Innovation in an Exponential World

MARK R. HATCH

Copyright 2018 by Mark R. Hatch. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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9781119418825(Hardcover)

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BOOM! The greatest explosion of innovation and creativity in all human history is upon us. Radical advances in 3D printing, biosciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, computer science, pharmacology, physics, material science, network and communications, education, tool use and access to knowledge, markets, financing, and communities are driving the fastest and largest leap forward we have ever experienced. And best of all, this revolution is open to almost everyone. That's right, this revolution is one that the average person will be able to participate in and reap the rewards of participating. This is a unique time in human history that offers a fundamentally positive transformative potential. I hope by the end of the book you will not only agree with me, but join the revolution. BOOM!

Author note: I use BOOM! in my presentations to keep the audience engaged and because some of the success stories are so amazing that they deserve a BOOM! It has become something of signature. Yes, you will see it here. And yes, you should read that word out loud. Shall we practice?

Everything around us is changing. Everything. The past is no longer a reliable guide to the future. Yes, there are some terrifying trends and scary new technologies, and some technologies can be misused. But after being immersed in the technology and trends of the future for more than thirty years, I've become more optimistic about the future, not less. And while it is human nature to see and anticipate negative outcomes, or to focus on worst-case scenarios, we can (re)train ourselves to see opportunities and look for potentially positive outcomes.

These trends are so broad and deep that they will touch every aspect of our lives. I see direct impacts on work, play, home, sleep, sports, language, personal identity, spiritualityon everythingand that is just with progress we have seen with artificial intelligence in the last couple of years. There is no corner of human existence that will not change over the next twenty years. Not one.

For much of the last decade, I have been a leader in one of the most remarkable revolutions, the Maker Movement. I've had an opportunity to be at or near the forefront of many of the revolutions in the recent past. During the personal computer revolution, in the early 1980s, I ran an interactive multimedia software/hardware company before multimedia was a thing. I launched one of the first fifty Fortune 500 corporate websites in the mid-1990s, democratized access to printing technology as a product management director at Kinko's just prior to the first dot-com boom and bust, and drove both an online health benefits website and a software-as-services back-office platform in the 2000s during and after Web 1.0. After 2007 I became a leader in the Maker Movement, and from that perch and through personal interest I've become embedded in a far-ranging group of activities, people, organizations, companies, and crazies (in the best sense of the word) who are creating the future. I'm not trying to brag (I don't think), just trying to build context for where I'm coming from. I'm far from the success I seek, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to live and work in what I am convinced is the most remarkable time to be alive in human history.

A major theme of this book will be rooted in the Maker Movement and what it means for you and society. But the Maker Movement is operating within the context of exponential technological innovation, and it is riding the wave of change being driven by these exponential technologies. As such, I will also cover the exponential technology that is the impetus for much of the change within the movement. It is impossible to grasp the coming impact of the Maker Movement without this background. I will leverage my experience as an adjunct faculty member at Singularity University for this section, with shout-outs to Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamantes, Salem Ismael, Peter Van Geest, Rob Nail, Jonathan Knowells, David Kraft, Vivek Wadhwa, and others involved there.

The Maker Movement started in 2004 with the initial publication of Make: magazine by O'Reilly Publishing. Dale Daugherty is recognized as the founder of the movement, with the support of Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media and the chronicler, instigator, and founder of not a few movements himself. Maker Media has spun out of O'Reilly and remains the go-to resource for all things maker-ish. In 2006, Dale and Dan Woods (now CEO of TechShop in my old role) launched the first Maker Faire at the San Mateo, California, fairgrounds and started the practice of bringing participants of the nascent industry together at an annual festival of maker celebration, networking, and conversation. It has exploded.