Arts solve unsolvable problems
Books / / December 19, 2019
You all know Stephen Hawking (Stephen Hawking). He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Paralysis and muscular atrophy lead to immobility, interruptions in breathing and loss of speech. In Hawking has a special device that synthesizes speech. But if you do not outstanding physicist, it is unlikely you will be able to purchase it.
Mick Ebeling found out about it when I met an artist named Tempt. He also has ALS, and he could not communicate with relatives for seven years. Ebeling has figured out how to solve this problem. Here is what he said at the TED conference.
On how he decided to do "impossible" altruistic acts, Mick wrote the book. On the one hand, this DIY-manual, and on the other - an exciting work of art, written in the first person and full of emotions.
We present to your attention an excerpt from this book. It is dedicated to the movement maker (maker's movement - «motion creators"). When people refuse to buy ready-made things, and simply print them the 3D-printer. Mick Ebeling was able to adapt the idea to create a prosthetic for children affected by the war in Sudan.
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impossible is Nothing
After laser projection Tempta I realized that we are part of something that has long intrigued me. I mean the movement makers. This happened just a few years before Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, wrote the book "The creators: a new industrial Revolution »(Makers: The New Industrial Revolution), which became a kind of manifesto of this movement, the signs of which are already visible everywhere.
Makers movement replaced the movement of hackers. The origin of the era of personal computers in the early seventies of the last century has led to the emergence of subcultures young people, to create in the virtual world, these amazing inventions, which could not compete large company. They could crack, alter, improve any program and adapt it to their own needs. Uninitiated they seemed anarchists; in its same range they were regarded as revolutionaries, men who seized the means of production - virtual production - and to subordinate them to their goals. Now the makers have done the same, but in the real world. It is one thing - to create new tools of online trade or business, the graphical user interface of Windows and Virtual million other inventions that have appeared in the last thirty years, and quite another - to implement the invention in real world.
A few hours later I landed in Johannesburg. At best, it will take me a week to learn to type prostheses the 3D-printer - technology that my staff have developed and improved the last few months.
So where exactly are we heading? Richard Van Ac tried to cool our enthusiasm careless dose of harsh reality. I must say it was quite a bitter pill to swallow.
Plain text, he warned us that to be in a combat zone is much more dangerous than we imagine; that foot on Sudanese land, we immediately become live targets; that we have taken hostage and that we will have to face the unimaginable horrors. But I also knew that somewhere out there waiting for me a child - a child like mine, - that no one else to help, except for people who are ready to take risks. As always, I support my mantra:
When, if not now? And who, if I do not?
In January 2014 in The New Yorker appeared very informative article about the history of Evgeny Morozov movement makers, has its roots in the days of the beginning of the artisans and inventors of the past century. Although they failed to make the owner of the working end results of production, they sowed seeds that Morozov calls "the triumph of simplicity, appeal to archaic and inventive consumerism as a form of political activity. " And these seeds germinated in 1968 after the book of Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Catalog", addressed to the people who dropped out of the mainstream. That some of us forget about Brande, is the fact that along with the promotion of subsistence farming, wood-burning stoves and handicrafts essential tool of the revolutionary he considered the latest technology - personal a computer. Brand It popularized the term "hacker."
Morozov writes: "In 1972, Rolling Stone published an article Brand" space war "of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University. In it, he contrasted the hackers planners - technocrats from the rigid way of thinking and a complete lack of imagination - and he said that "hackers declared itself in full force, when computers will become available to the public. " mobile elite "hackers have been emerging for Brand.
Students, beat cops, were not real radicals, says Morozov quoting Brand. The true radicals were "anarchists hakerdoma. The hacker does not recognize any authority and puts everything worthwhile creative processing, improving and adapting it to the delight of us all. " When Brand asked who today bears the flag of subculture, he said: "The movement makers - people who take all that, it would seem, can not be dismantled, shake out all the stuffing out of it and start something jew's harp ".
Sounds familiar. The "maker" Chris Anderson throws the rallying cry of all our extravagant fraternity: "The previous ten years It was dedicated to the discovery of new ways of co-creation, development and operation of the Internet, - writes it. - next ten years we will have to implement these lessons in the real world. " Indeed, the widespread introduction of computer and Internet technology over the past decade has led to remarkable achievements in the field of communication, creativity and interactivity. The people that I work with, are scattered around the globe; we share with each other ideas, drawings, sketches of articles and hundreds of other things that in the time of my parents seemed absolutely impossible.
However, our ability to benefit from such cooperation and boundless creativity is constrained, in my view, two factors.
First - it is inherent in our greed.
Internet arose from the idea that information should be free; people began to write different things and put them in the network by sharing them with other users.
The writer watched as his ideas spread around the world with the speed of the virus, we have inspired others and transformed into new ideas. To overthrow the government, the revolution took place - and all this is thanks to the freedom of information. But when it comes to physical things, we as a society with much less willing to recognize that the idea behind these things, too, should be free.
The second constraint, which we were able to escape - a prison called "economies of scale". Anderson explains this phenomenon by the example of the brand Rubber Duckie. Suppose you want to start a business for the production of rubber boots Rubber Duckie. Start-up costs (design development and procurement of equipment) amount to 10 thousand dollars. If you make just one pair of shoes, it will cost you 10 thousand, but with the increase in production costs to the extent of unit will steadily decrease and the volume of issue of 10 thousand pairs of the cost of one pair is a relatively small.
The world's makers it's different. The design of the boot can be developed directly on a computer - and immediately ready to produce them. All you need to do, - 3D-printer is connected to your computer. You simply click on the "print" and you go to dinner, and when we return, you find on your desktop glamorous boots. That's all. You can go to the market and sell them for a couple of bucks, and if anyone buys, print more. No investments in equipment (except printer and plastic, which costs are reduced with every month), no market research, no "scale".
That's what we're trying to do in the Not Impossible.
I would like people to have better access to medical devices, means of communication and other basic necessities, buy they are not able to. We, the makers have challenged the market and made available to the public advanced technology.
What we do can be called a "revolution against the absurd." Everyone who has ever tried to get it for your loved ones medical equipment, know how absurd can be a maze of providers, hospitals, lawyers and insurance companies. It is absurd that in these days of ALS patients have to communicate with their parents, watching as they drive fingers on the paper. It's like watching someone rubs a tree a tree and think, "Hey, someone has to invent a match for these people."
"Impossible," Mick Ebeling
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