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There Is No Maker Movement in China

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Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#31

Post by jessaustin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7
jessaustin wrote: post #3

The cybermart description matches exactly my memory of Sim Lim Square from when I lived in Singapore, except that place is immense and you could get the best naan you've ever had in the basement.

The best naan is to be had in Japan, where every single Indian restaurant seems to have what looks like a stone wood fired pizza oven (and there are many that run all you can eat naan lunch specials). Living in Beijing, I'm so bored of cybermarts. Also, if you want to find the makers here, try wangjing and CAFA (central academy of fine arts) rather than Zhongguancun (where all the e-markets and grand tech universitie…

I found Japanese Indian food to be an acquired taste; I eventually did acquire it, but it's kind of its own thing. I doubt the place I'm thinking of is still in the basement of SLS, since that was more than a decade ago, but they advertised "Pakistani-Afghanistan" food and the big burly guy who punched the naan then threw it directly into the tandoor. In addition to Singapore and Japan, I've also had naan in India and many other places... Eventually I'll have my own tandoor.

Even if I'd missed the naan in Japan, my experience with Japanese Mexican food alone would have left me somewhat skeptical of your claim. b^)

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#32

Post by chaostheory »

benbreen wrote: post #20
chaostheory wrote: post #18

I strongly disagree with this post and the author's opinions on Chinese culture. He's missing something really big that's a core of Chinese culture. > the "We here in the Maker movement could not be more pleased with ourselves" vibe. This is another of way of saying that we enjoy making here beyond earning a living. Yes it's work, but it's also recreation and art. In places like SV and NY, people make because mainly…

That link is great. And please do expand on this! I'd love to read more about this topic. It would make an interesting contemporary counterpart to Kenneth Pomeranz's "The Great Divergence," where he explores why an Industrial Revolution almost (bit didn't quite) took place in the Yangzi Valley as well as the late 18th c. English Midlands. It's an interesting read, even if some of it has been contested: http://press.p…

I'd love to but I don't have time and there's a lot of articles and content for this that already exists.

The gist of it all is that China is a low trust society. Everyone has a price and rules are only rules unless you have the resources to bend them for yourself. Yes this happens in Western culture as well, the big difference is the both degree and how prevalent it is. e.g. it is much harder to bribe a police officer or teacher here than it is in China. Over here it's an extraordinary event; over there it's mundane. So how do things work in a low trust society? If you can't rely on the rule of law to be consistently fair, you rely on your family. I'm not just talking immediate family. I'm talking about your cousins, and not just your immediate cousins; people over there rely on extended relatives as well like second or third cousins. That's your network of stability. Everything and everyone else (short of close friends) don't matter. In general you put your family ahead of yourself and your personal desires i.e. You don't study philosophy even though that's your love; you go into something practical like being a doctor or computer engineer (yes we have that here as well, but again the difference is the degree)... If there's any culture that truly adheres to the psychological theories of evolution, it's Chinese culture.

One more thing: It's a society of pragmatic pessimists, which I feel is yet another reason Chinese society has against it when it comes to innovation.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#33

Post by mcphage »

beachstartup wrote: post #21
[deleted] wrote: post #19

[deleted]

i'm asian american so i'm keenly aware of this kind of thing but it's not apparent to me that the title of the HN post "there is no maker movement in china" has anything to do with the actual text of the message which has more nuance than that title would suggest... am i missing something? without that bait-ish title it takes on a much less derisive tone, although it uses some questionable phrasing. maybe ello just s…

No, the person you're replying to just has remarkably poor reading comprehension skills. I'd say maybe English isn't their first language (which it totally might not be), but even that isn't sufficient to explain their misinterpretation.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#34

Post by chaostheory »

[deleted] wrote: post #19

[deleted]

I think you meant to reply to my post because the article more or less says the same thing as your post.

> Ah yes, yet more cultural enlightenment from someone who's been here a few years? Months?

If you haven't guessed already, I'm Chinese.

> They hack hardware, but they are not Makers.

Just having the skill to do something is different from having the love for it. It makes a huge difference in what you make in the long run as both an individual and society. This said, I'm not saying that this can never happen in China, but for it to happen there needs to be a really big cultural change which will be very hard to do when there's an artificial limit placed on the ideas that people can experience and express.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#36

Post by ewzimm »

zamfi wrote: post #30
[deleted] wrote: post #19

[deleted]

Did we read the same article? I think Shirky is saying that "Maker culture" in the US (and Canada, etc) is dominated by people doing stuff mostly in their spare time, being self-congratulating, and looking up to the occasional person able to make a career from "Making". In contract, he says, to China, where this activity does exist but is dwarfed by the actual people who Make Stuff who are far more competent than the…

You're right, but you're not going far enough. He says Chinese makers have been doing it so long it no longer resembles what Americans would recognize as such. American Makers generally don't strip junkyards for raw materials to manufacture into screws. He's saying the American Maker movement is an infant version of what the Chinese are doing, and that the only way to really comprehend how different they are is to develop an appreciation of the craft traditions in America that have been passed down, mostly by women, for generations. He's saying the Craft spinoff of Maker failed because it was like a baby trying to lead a mother.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#37

Post by potatolicious »

reedlaw wrote: post #12

There is a downside to hacking-as-livelihood. Many workers are overworked. They hack for a living, but seldom have time to hack for fun. This is especially true among software developers. There are far fewer activities organized around programming than in the West. Occasionally there are weekend hackathons, but few professional programmers have the heart to participate. They are looking to spend time with family or e…

Doing it for a living certainly does take some of the fun out of it, and overworking in particular is both common and unhealthy.

That said, I don't think the presence of hackathons (or other such "scene" events) should be taken as evidence of the existence of a hacking community (or lack thereof).

Part of the point the author makes is that, unlike in the West, hacking/making is not a big deal. It's not a subculture or a statement, it simply is. One of the things I really despise about hackathons here is how much time they spend wallowing in their own cultural statement. Sponsored by Monster Energy? Check. Important investors as judges? Check. Nerf guns? Yep. Quadcopters flying everywhere? Yeeeep. In the end it feels like 50% creating stuff and 50% reinforcing your place in the Subculture.

In the same way the video game subculture is 50% enjoying video games, and 50% self-referential memes about its own subculture-ness.

When I first got started in programming it was on obscure forums on the Internet. I didn't participate in any "scene" events, I just wrote code, and collaborated with others online who wrote code. We did it for its own sake, not to win competitions or impress judges or hobnob with industry luminaries. We just did.

I'd venture that most of the hacking going on in the world (in the West or the East) is going on in backyards - both virtual and real. It's hard to gauge how much is going on precisely because they're just hacking and making, not preening their feathers ostentatiously and inventing capital-letter names for their movement.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#39

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jessaustin wrote: post #31
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best naan is to be had in Japan, where every single Indian restaurant seems to have what looks like a stone wood fired pizza oven (and there are many that run all you can eat naan lunch specials). Living in Beijing, I'm so bored of cybermarts. Also, if you want to find the makers here, try wangjing and CAFA (central academy of fine arts) rather than Zhongguancun (where all the e-markets and grand tech universitie…

I found Japanese Indian food to be an acquired taste; I eventually did acquire it, but it's kind of its own thing. I doubt the place I'm thinking of is still in the basement of SLS, since that was more than a decade ago, but they advertised "Pakistani-Afghanistan" food and the big burly guy who punched the naan then threw it directly into the tandoor. In addition to Singapore and Japan, I've also had naan in India an…

Frankly, I've never had good naan in Singapore or even India (Bangalore, Delhi), but I haven't explored those places as much as Japan. I guess it depends on what you are looking for, but Japanese naan is huge and fluffy. There are tons of Indian people in Japan, even in small cities like Gifu, and all the restaurants tend to be family style affairs (as opposed to China, where the cook is probably Chinese...grrr....).

I'm not really a big fan of central Asian naan (too hard, not fluffy), but we have a local variation of that here from Xinjiang.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#40

Post by seanmcdirmid »

leishulang wrote: post #22
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best naan is to be had in Japan, where every single Indian restaurant seems to have what looks like a stone wood fired pizza oven (and there are many that run all you can eat naan lunch specials). Living in Beijing, I'm so bored of cybermarts. Also, if you want to find the makers here, try wangjing and CAFA (central academy of fine arts) rather than Zhongguancun (where all the e-markets and grand tech universitie…

I brought a galaxy phone for my mum from one of those cybermarts in Guangzhou. The original 8G ram was replaced with a 4G one. When my mum complains that the phone run slow, I was like "you installed too much crap-apps". Then one day I finally found out the phone was modified.

That doesn't make sense. It was probably the flash that was replaced.

NEVER trust those people at the cybermarts...buy from the Apple store, a certified Taobao store, or at a real storefront (though you still have to be careful). They will cheat you if they have any opportunity to do so.

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