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There Is No Maker Movement in China

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Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#61

Post by sleepyhead »

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…

> The best naan is to be had in Japan

O_o

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#62

Post by rasz_pl »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #11

Great essay. Making is a movement in America, because it isn't a necessity. In China, repairing things instead of throwing them away is the norm. So there are large numbers of Makers in every town, who honed their skills in electronics repair. When robots bring down the cost of new goods to the point where it no longer makes sense to repair things--because they are so cheap to replace--China will lose its Makers just…

You are delusional. When robots are good enough to build everything and labour cost of manufacturing approaches zero there will be NO ONE to buy anything. We will end up with 1% owning robots, 9% working directly on robots(designing/fixing), and 90% in favelas eating grass and cardboard bread.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#64

Post by msie »

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 "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.

I didn't see it that way. To me it meant: "we are pleased with ourselves that we are not just helpless consumers but also creators and self-reliant". We are smug with our technical know-how. Another form of machismo.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#65

Post by gbog »

chaostheory wrote: post #32
benbreen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 offic…

The problem with China is that whatever you say about her is true, and it's opposite is true too.

For example, businesses rely very highly on trust in China, precisely because you can't rely on laws to protect you. But it is another kind of trust.

Also, Chinese are quite optimistic too, that's why they never stop creating restaurants, businesses, etc.

And pragmatism: it is a strange pragmatism that who bring one billion of people to fire crackers and spent thousands of rmb in smoke and noise

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#66

Post by pavelrub »

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…

> It seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture

Why? What does it mean "generalizations about overall Chinese culture"? Are you claiming that in China there is only a collection of small, unrelated cultures, and no shared core? The whole point of the concept of "culture" is to observe that such generalizations do exist, and they drive many common behaviors in societies. That's why sociology of culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_culture) is a thing.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#68

Post by 1stop »

pavelrub wrote: post #66
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…

> It seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture Why? What does it mean "generalizations about overall Chinese culture"? Are you claiming that in China there is only a collection of small, unrelated cultures, and no shared core? The whole point of the concept of "culture" is to observe that such generalizations do exist, and they drive…

> Are you claiming that in China there is only a collection of small, unrelated cultures, and no shared core?

Are you implying it isn't? I mean there are more than the Han chinese (ethnic culture), and even within that there is are quite varied cultures within the Han. Most people's "chinese generalisations" are generalising about upper-middle class Chinese from the Big 3 cities + Hong Kong. Because they are the majority that migrate.

Shanghai-ese are not like Guangzhou-ese are not like Hong Kong-ese are not like Beijing-ese are not like Taiwanese. But they'd all call themselves Chinese. So yes you can make some fairly mundane observations: "They all use chopsticks", "They like eating rice", "They have an incredibly competitive education system", "They share a common grammar".

But you could make similar observations about "Europe"... and I'm not sure your point still stands at that point :\

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#69

Post by gambiting »

"Hardware hacking hasn't become a hot new thing in China because it never stopped being a regular old thing." - I feel like buying regular bread is already this in many places. Where I come from (Poland) there are bakeries in every town, you can buy regular, sour dough bread and rolls, cakes and pastries for very very cheap. However, since I've moved to the UK I noticed that people are so used to buying horrible foil-packed bread in supermarkets, that all bakeries look as some kind of delis - they make "artisinal" and "hand made" bread made with "lots of love and care" and therefore end up costing 5x the price of the cheap toast-bread variety, and people talk about it as if you've been buying caviare for dessert. It's regular bread, there's nothing special about it.

I imagine it's the same with electronics in this example - it's nothing new,it's just that America has forgotten how to do it so now it's "hip and special".

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#70

Post by 1stop »

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…

This comment just reads as a passive-aggressive racist rant.

Do you really think people in China do not share?

Do you really think Chinese are 'used' to obeying 'emporers'? Is that because they did 100 years ago? Which emperor do they follow now? (if you answer is the CCP or Xijinping, how is that different to Congress/Obama?)

Is buying a movie off iTunes for $10 more of a rebellion against institutions than p2p-streaming it over PPS?

BYD - Innovative, non-copy cat company (A kind of chinese-mirror of Tesla).

Tencent - Non-copy cat company, crazy amount of innovation and market penetration

So the above invalidates pretty much every point you make about 'chinese culture' being the reason they have no maker community, because it clearly hasn't stopped them from doing all of the things you say they don't do in other areas.

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