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Makers: A Novel Paperback – May 22, 2018
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From Cory Doctorow, the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother, the repackaged trade paperback of Makers, a novel of the booms, busts, and further booms in store for America―now with a new cover!
Perry and Lester invent things―seashell robots that make toast, Boogie Woogie Elmo dolls that drive cars. They also invent entirely new economic systems, like the "New Work," a New Deal for the technological era. Barefoot bankers cross the nation, microinvesting in high-tech communal mini-startups like Perry and Lester's. Together, they transform the country, and Andrea Fleeks, a journo-turned-blogger, is there to document it.
Then it slides into collapse. The New Work bust puts the dot.combomb to shame. Perry and Lester build a network of interactive rides in abandoned Wal-Marts across the land. As their rides, which commemorate the New Work's glory days, gain in popularity, a rogue Disney executive grows jealous, and convinces the police that Perry and Lester's 3D printers are being used to run off AK-47s.
Hordes of goths descend on the shantytown built by the New Workers, joining the cult. Lawsuits multiply as venture capitalists take on a new investment strategy: backing litigation against companies like Disney. Lester and Perry's friendship falls to pieces when Lester gets the ‘fatkins' treatment, turning him into a sybaritic gigolo.
Then things get really interesting.
- Print length560 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateMay 22, 2018
- Dimensions5.39 x 1.64 x 8.32 inches
- ISBN-101250196434
- ISBN-13978-1250196439
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While we're never told exactly when this all starts, it is sometime in the near distant future - probably the late 20-teens. Things aren't a whole lot different than today - pretty much a linear projection of where cheap microprocessors will lead - from a "Boogie Woogie Elmo" that mimics dance moves and responds to voice commands to virtually ubiquitous robots performing a wide range of specialized tasks. Venture capitalist Landon Kattlewell has engineered the merger of Kodak and Duracell, reshaping the resulting "Kodacell" into a loose network of inventors and hackers, spawning the "New Work" micro-economy that looks a lot more like Bangalore than Boston. The Internet merges with the physical world through 3D "printers" - fantasy devices that can create in mass virtually any device who's component plans and parts can be digitized. On one hand, virtually every shopping mall and Walmart are boarded up, and shanty towns sprawl through suburbia, yet Disney World flourishes, still drawing massive crowds with streams of disposable income. San Jose Mercury News reporter Suzanne Church is assigned as an embedded reporter with the loveable tinkerers Perry and Lester, chronicling this upside-down brave new world. But after losing new job as the old media collapses along with the old economy, she remains on the story, gathering a huge following on her blog which ends up generating more than enough advertising income to keep her afloat and independent. Lester and Perry's genius leads to a bizarre "ride" built in an abandoned WalMart, drawing not only huge crowds but also Disney's unwanted attention. But like all bubbles, "New Work" collapses, Disney takes the gloves off, and the relationship between Perry, Lester, and Suzanne frays.
Doctorow is no fan of big business and big bureaucracy, and "Makers" is at its core a story of the triumph of the little guy. But, fiction not withstanding, his thesis is flawed, cutting huge corners in economic theory to arrive at the micro-economy utopia he has created. Doctorow falls back on tired themes of exploitation of the masses by evil corporations, while suggesting that life would be hunky dory for all if wealth (and technology) was simply redistributed to all. Not surprisingly, the author leans on misinformed parallels to FDR's "New Deal" - like it was "Roosevelt's public-investment plan that spent America free of the Depression" (it was World War II - not government spending - that set the economy back on an even keel.) But flaws not withstanding, "Makers" is a powerful novel, a poignant, passionate and rambling epic of the future, the future of technology, and of love and relationships. It's worth taking the ride.
One of the reasons that people tend to dislike Makers is that it seems to advocate a socio-communal social structure where people are basically good and if you just get the lawyers out of the way, everything will work out. However, even the author doesn't seem to believe this worldview very strongly because choices have consequences and the relationships between the best and nicest people tend to decay like a rotten tooth ("all we do is magnify each other's flaws").
I gave it 5 stars for a number of reasons.
The author wrote this book just 10 years ago (hello 2020 and COVID19) yet he pressed the fabric of the technology just a bit further into the future than where we are today. At that time, 3D printers were relatively primitive, the goop expensive and touchy, and yet he saw where he would lead. I built a kit today with a micro-controller and a servo motor; the author saw a world where these parts were so readily available, so open, and so mass-produced that you could take old toys apart, re-assemble them, re-flash the firmware and re-use the tech for entire different purposes at a scale that the original innovators never conceived.
Social media in "Makers" is even more pervasive than it is today. Heaven help us if Facebook embeds itself any further into our lives (and people willingly give up the last vestiges of their privacy without a thought). I do wish that the complex filtering and reporting in social media, as described in the book, existed today.
Credit cards have "pay patches" in the surfaces of tables in restaurants and bars. Our "tap to pay" with our phones or cards is almost there.
Disneyland, in the book, has severed itself from Walt Disney's vision and are simply a group of corporate profit centers. It's still the Happiest Place on Earth, but we accept a far lower standard for happiness. And, like Facebook, Disney (in the book) wants to extend their reach in every home in America (and beyond).
I follow the author on Twitter. He may only write several hundred words a day but they are quality words.
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If you're not remotely techcentric I wouldn't bother as it would read as gibberish.
I am sure this book will be seen as a prophetic vision in a couple of years time when we all have our domestic 3D printers churning out bits of "tchotchke" to sate our need for instant and momentary delectation.
The book is long and detailed and there are a few continuity flaws and some repetition . . . . .
THAT SAID! In the end (which is pretty pedestrian with no whistles, bells or explosions!)I was left with a tear in my eye, balling the book around in my hands looking for the little world of "Makers" and wanting more. So vivid was the story in my mind that I feel I'd recognise the characters were I to pass them on the street and I'm desperate to see what's so good about the "ride".
Very involving and thought provoking and I'm very glad I found it, not perfect but great for the right reader, therefore it's 5 stars.
Keep on "MAKING" ;)
Regards, Mark
As someone on the very edges of the 'Maker Movement', I was challenged and excited by the things created by the characters (and everything is either feasible today or will be soon), but this book is much more than that - every character is 'real', I've met them all and that took the story from a novel to an undiscovered reality for me.
Absolutely superb!!!







