Maker

THE FUTURE STARTS HERE: Big things are coming from America’s garages. This one belongs to our own Mr. Jalopy.

What’s in Your Garage?

We’re betting on solutions to big problems coming from innovative makers working in their basements, garages, and workshops. By Dale Dougherty

In an October 2008 presidential debate, moderator probably with little funding or support. ... Our goal Tom Brokaw asked whether serious challenges is to find some of those industrious, ingenious such as climate change could be met by big makers at work in garages everywhere.” Manhattan-style projects like the one that developed Like fabled garage bands, Silicon Valley startups, the atom bomb, or by people working in 100,000 and Mister Jalopy’s bike repair workshop (above garages, which is how Silicon Valley started. photo), maker-led businesses have been started in all

Both candidates wandered off topic, but I really kinds of unusual spaces. Here are a few examples: wanted them to answer the question. As a matter of national policy, do we think change will come from ideas developed by the “best and brightest” minds?

Or will it come from grassroots innovation, widely distributed and wildly varied?

When I heard the question, I replied on our makezine.com blog: “A lot is going to depend on people working in 100,000 or more garages,

Photograph by Dave Bullock

Limor Fried moved into a live/work space near Wall Street that she got for the right price because young investment bankers were fleeing the city. She’s come up with numerous original designs, including the Proto Shield for Arduino and MiniPOV kit, and she set up Adafruit Industries ( adafruit.com) to bring those designs to market. A pioneer, along with

36 Make: Volume 18