FabLab, Movimento Maker e DIY culture

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Millennium, the maker movement has represented an experience of innovation and development, capable of proposing socio-technical and learning models, new forms of digital production and manufacturing, new social and innovation practices. Starting from an interpretative framework typical of social movement studies, this contribution aims to analyze the maker movement and to explore its many peculiarities based on a research work carried out in FabLabs managed by Lazio Region and by private FabLabs operating in the territory of the Capital. As pointed out by Smith et al. (2013) it is possible to trace the maker movement to three possible interpretative frameworks, each of which defines the sociotechnical possibilities expressed by digital grassroots manufacturing in a different way. The first frame considers the potential of the maker movement framing it as a pivot of a new industrial revolution capable of extending the innovations brought about by the digital communications revolution to the material world (Anderson 2012); the second, considers the dimensions of the manufacturing’s democratization, now accessible to everybody through the diffusion of desktop digital manufacturing technologies (Mota 2011) together with the possibilities of sharing and learning, offered by the Internet and by online peer-production communities (Magone and Mazali 2016). The latter frames the dimension of bottom-up innovation capable of also developing ecological sensitivity and awareness with respect to a more sustainable production system, contributing to the affirmation of post-consumer values (Gershenfeld 2012).