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There Is No Maker Movement in China

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Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#51

Post by rdtsc »

taurath wrote: post #44
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…

> The main reason I've always remembered this man is because he's one of the few Chinese people in China (that I'm aware of) who actually enjoys making for the sake of making, and not just as a livelihood. China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture and then just call it a day. The fact is that even…

Ok as the gp pointed out. Where are the thousands of open source projects on Github written by Chinese?

> China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic

Surely, by your own suggestion, there should be countless examples of open source projects driven from there. Otherwise, their point (even in its generalized form) still stands.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#52

Post by reedlaw »

stretchwithme wrote: post #29
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…

Same downside as doing anything for a living.

Not so much if you work a normal 40 hour workweek. That leaves some productive energy for evenings and weekends.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#53

Post by v-yadli »

rdtsc wrote: post #51
taurath wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main reason I've always remembered this man is because he's one of the few Chinese people in China (that I'm aware of) who actually enjoys making for the sake of making, and not just as a livelihood. China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture and then just call it a day. The fact is that even…

Ok as the gp pointed out. Where are the thousands of open source projects on Github written by Chinese? > China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic Surely, by your own suggestion, there should be countless examples of open source projects driven from there. Otherwise, their point (even in its generalized form) still stands.

You have to make them speak English first. I mean, for the majority of Chinese people, they don't care about your Github thing...

Edit: I'd suggest you do some research on this: where's all the information hiding in the Chinese internet? - An interesting example is this: http://www.pudn.com/ It works different. Yes you can download stuff for free there, but you have to upload your own stuff to gain credit.

It's just that, things work quite different here in China... All the things you talk about, you have to think whether they stand, first.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#55

Post by newhouseb »

chaostheory wrote: post #46
taurath wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main reason I've always remembered this man is because he's one of the few Chinese people in China (that I'm aware of) who actually enjoys making for the sake of making, and not just as a livelihood. China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture and then just call it a day. The fact is that even…

> China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture Ok I'm open to being wrong. How about proving me wrong? What parts of my description of Chinese culture are wrong? For one thing it's a pessimistic society hence the photocopy culture (why take a crazy risk for something unknown and original when I can j…

> the photocopy culture

I used to spout this phrase (or ones like it) back when 校内／人人 used to look like a pixel-perfect clone of FB. But I think China is growing beyond this phase. There are small things (like the touch to talk in iMessage? WeChat/微信 has had that for ages) and bigger things like the emergence of drones - the FAA just recently allowed filming of TV shows but some of China's most popular shows are already filmed almost entirely from drones (i.e. 爸爸去那儿).

I think as Westerners it's easy to see what's a clone (because it looks the same) and much harder to see what's not (for us without full fluency) because we can't recognize the innovative ideas everyone else in China may already take for granted.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#56

Post by seanmcdirmid »

reedlaw wrote: post #50
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not that bad here. Saturdays aren't work days anymore for most professionals like they were in the 90s.

Yes, Saturdays are not "required" work days for white collar workers, but overtime is the norm and often approaches 60 hours. For blue collar workers I've seen 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Yep, not a single day off despite having national mandatory vacation days.

Definitely not the norm in my office. I think I'm the only person here right now.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#57

Post by imrehg »

And a reply from Tom Igoe (mentioned in the original post as being opinionated and informed): https://ello.co/tigoe/post/dxGk7ID3kcO0cF95U2so6w

> US makers have the luxury of being able to be makers because we outsourced manufacturing. And as China's manufacturing wages rise, that middle class has less romanticism about making things, because the skills are not two generations in the past, as they are for us. The kids there who wanna be makers most likely (based on a handful of conversations at MF Shenzen, not systematic) romanticize the part of a US Maker life that we now find tiring: the part where we hold down a high-wage job designing things to be made in offshore factories.

> I'm wondering if Maker culture is just genx's mid-life crisis. Instead of getting Porsches, we get 3D printers.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#59

Post by MaulingMonkey »

icebraining wrote: post #41
ewzimm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

American Makers generally don't strip junkyards for raw materials to manufacture into screws. My first thought was, "of course not, because Chinese companies sell screws for a lower price than it would cost to travel to the junkyard". At least, it makes sense to me that a glut of cheap stuff would eliminate any practical motivation for "making", leaving only the people who 'make' for pleasure. A second thought was, "…

I haven't heard of an electronics junkyard either (I'm american), but I can think of a close equivalent which might count - RePC. They're a state approved electronics recycling center (I've taken CRTs I no longer wanted down there), but they also keep bins and asiles of old / used hard drives, cables, etc. in stock.

Very retro - it wasn't that long ago I went down there to pick up a replacement 80x25 monochrome tty terminal for an aging point of sales system, not much younger than I am.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#60

Post by aarongolliver »

goblin89 wrote: post #38
turbostyler wrote: post #10

Ello is so shitty. It's like a cross between Tumblr and Twitter with a shitty UI and almost no functionality.

Ello is just another way to spread and consume content.

OK? That doesn't stop it from being a shitty way to spread and consume content.
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