This story begins for me during a technical visit to a wedding venue. It was september 2016 and I was working on a gastronomic project with a couple of friends, we were managing a co-working kitchen and had a catering service.
Whenever we were planning anything we'd go to the location to elaborate the dynamic of the event, see what we'd need to bring in order to cook, etc. And this time it was no different, so while touring the facilities of this historic 130 hectare farm just outside of Barcelona we stumbled upon the laboratories in its basement. And in between all the machines, different projects lying on the tables, and all-around cool stuff I found a leaflet that introduced me to the FabAcademy.
If you want to know more about the Green FabLab make sure to check it out!
So I was already excited about this place and it just got better when I got home, looked this FabAcademy thing up and did a bit of research. Take into consideration that for someone that has education as an Economist, who is already involved in movements of collaborative economy and has been developing a conscience about how we should adapt a new model in order to work better against the inequalities of our system this was a great discovery.
I've always liked to reverse-engineer (just a fancy way to say that I loved to tear stuff apart) and tinker with what I had around, I believe that knowing more about our direct environment and the way it works gives us a greater degree of autonomy in the different systems that we're embedded. And that point of view is shared when it comes to my understanding of how a community or economy should work. Nonetheless, in the later years we've seen how the world has immersed a process of globalisation (referencing to the geo-political and economic trends) and that has morphed into a scenario of worldwide financialisation, in which the financial aspect of the economy, mostly linked to the non-productive economy and specultive practices has taken over. But this is different, it is about making!
(For a deeper understandig about financialisation and world related case studies you can read
"Financialisation and the Financial and Economic Crises: Country Studies" edited by Eckhard Hein, Daniel Detzer and Nina Dodig. I also recommend Yanis Varoufakis "The Global Minotaur".)
What I had stumbled upon here was an already established movement, that included different groups representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture at the intersection with the hacker culture. This movement had many branches but was very present in Barcelona through the Fab Foundation and its network of FabLabs.
What were the main premises of this movement and why did they resonate with me. First there is the fact that it is an open source initiative, which is basic to understand how this movement aims to get everyone involved, through an open repository of knowledge, all the information is there for everyone, which makes the learning process non-restrictive as long as you have internet access.
Then there is the fact that it doesn't work as a KM0 movement sourcing everything locally but follows the principles of a circular economy, that seeks to rebuild capital, whether this is financial, manufactured, human, social or natural. This ensures enhanced flows of goods and services. The system diagram illustrates the continuous flow of technical and biological materials through the ‘value circle’.
This is a bit of a draft, I'd like to put together this ideas and be able to dvelve in some concepts a bit deeper, but for now I think it's a pretty good aproach on what my thoughts and hopes for the maker movement are.
Understanding how we as subjects interact with our environment in the physical and the virtual world is key for the development that our species
The definition of the word language varies depending on the dictionary you check it but the common denominator is between all the entries define it as a