I just read an interesting dissertation by Leah Buechley and Benjamin Mako Hill from MIT about diy culture as it relates to electrical engineering.

“… when media is easy to create, publish and distribute, production and consumption decentralize. While the 20th century was dominated by large companies who mass produced media that was mass consumed by the public, the 21st century is emerging as a time where media is produced and consumed in an increasingly non-homogeneous fashion by niche groups. These niche groups… use the internet to construct, share, find, and consume material that fits their particular (sometimes very particular) interests.”

Continue reading The Long Tail of Hardware →