Alex Pang on Tinkering
Just in time for the Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend, my Institute for the Future colleague Alex Pang wrote a fascinating essay about tinkering. I love the word "tinker." Back in Cincinnati, my oldest brother Mark, a lifelong maker who is now a research scientist and physician, spent his teen years digging around in an electronics hobbyist supply shop called The Tinker where resistors and capacitors were sold by the pound. From Vodafone Receiver:
What is interesting is that at its best, tinkering has an almost Zen-like sense of the present: its 'now' is timeless. It is neither heedless of the past or future, nor is it in headlong pursuit of immediate gratification. Tinkering offers a way of engaging with today's needs while also keeping an eye on the future consequences of our choices. And the same technological and social trends that have made tinkering appealing seem poised to make it even more pervasive and powerful in the future. Today we tinker with things; tomorrow, we will tinker with the world."Tinkering to the future"
What is tinkering? Discovering that certain snack tins can be used to make an antenna that extends the range of your wi-fi network, using electric toothbrush motors to power small robots, building a high-altitude balloon that takes video of the edge of space, are all examples of tinkering. It is technical work and a cultural attitude. Tinkering is customizing software and stuff; making new combinations of things that work better than their parts; and discovering new capabilities in or uses for existing products. Despite its fascination with things and bits, it is resolutely human-focused: you don't make things 'better' in some dry technical sense, you make them work better for you. Tinkerers modify everything from cars, computers, and cellphones, to virtual worlds and computer code. They are driven by a desire to experiment, to make existing technologies more useful, and to customize them to better suit users' needs.
According to MIT professor Mitch Resnick, tinkering might look at first like traditional engineering, but it is very different. Both are about designing and making things; but engineering tends to be top-down, linear, structured, abstract and rules-based - a highly formal, organized activity, meant to be carried out in (and in the service of) large organizations. Tinkering, in contrast, is bottom-up, iterative, experimental, practical and improvisational: informal and disorganized, accessible to anyone who is willing to learn (and fail) and it doesn't follow any plan too closely.
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Mr. Pescovitz, you've got a very electrical slant on tinkering. I think it's an ancient art, practiced by mechanically inclined individuals throughout history. It was a Tinker who brought us fire, tied a sharpened rock to a stick, created the wheel, traps and snares, housing, plumbing, weapons, weaving, footwear, and probably several other things.
May I be so bold as to suggest that it was the Tinker who led us out of caves, using vines and strips of leather to bind poles together, and cover them with thatch so he could live nearer to his water source.
All hail the Tinkers, who brought Man to the top of the food chain!
It's rather arrogant to take a very common and old word and spin it around to relate only to recent engineering, electronics, and technology. Unfortunately, that kind of behavior just reinforces the experience of many that too many programmers and engineers are arrogant elitists.
MIT and its ilk simply cannot co-opt "tinkering," the concept, definition or word. Too much historical precedence and too many artists and inventors outside of MIT invalidate much of what was written above.
It is far been more accurate to merely acknowledge "tinkering" is an important and intrinsic HUMAN characteristic which leads to art and inventions, and not try to "own" it only in the technical, scientific sense.
Artists and inventors are "tinkerers" -- experimenting and exploring, often without "trained" or "accepted" skills and usually working independently or outside the "system."
What we create by "tinkering" often has nothing to do with electronics or technology as it's understood today. "Tinkering" has resulted in the the production of many items used by many cultures for many years. To limit it to cellphones is being extremely narrow-minded.
But too many scientists and technologists often do not pay attention to nor acknowledge history. We want to think we invented this or that, when in reality, often earlier cultures not only invented, but perfected some things we can't perfect, even with all our current "tinkering."
Give it up, just face facts: "tinkering" has been around as long as humans have been walking.
"Pre-historic" cave painters "tinkered" with vegetable and other organic substances to paint on caves. Painters such as Maxfield Parrish and Rembrandt "tinkered" with various substances to make their own paints and varnish. That's one of the reasons it's hard to restore paintings (as well as why they need to be restored). Just try replicating these "home-made" paints, the result of "tinkering." Much of what they created was not scientific but intuitive, playful and experimental, and undocumented.
Merriam-Webster: "intransitive verb: to work in the manner of a tinker; especially to repair, adjust, or work with something in an unskilled or experimental manner. "Fiddle" transitive verb: to repair, adjust, or experiment with."
Written by a life-long an artist and "tinkerer." And yes, a techie, but I would never say "tinkering" is all about improving code. It's much more than that.
in time, the War Between the Tinkers and Sheddies will be epic poetry.
Ha, I've got you all beat. I grew up in Tinker! And it was the name of my elementary school.
Our propensity to tinker has altered our lifestyle immeasurably, to be sure, but there was a price to be paid. We've lost our wonderful fur coat and tough hide, now left with a few silly patches of hair here and there and skin like paper. Our grasping toes have withered to nubs. Our teeth, once long and strong, mounted in a powerful jaw that opened wide and threatening, are now like little corn kernels in a mandible barely able to crush a chicken bone.
Our once-long and powerful arms have atrophied into weak twigs, scarcely able to lift more that our body weight. Our legs? Forget it. We can't outrun an elephant.
Our senses have grown dim- our hearing is bad, our sight is weak and getting worse, and we're nearly blind to the world of scent, so bad that we stumble blindly crossing warning scent fences unawares, we eat and drink things that dying senses warn us not to put in our mouth. Remember your first taste of whiskey? Blah!
Our pets think we're stupid. We walk past bushes without so much as a sniff. We throw away perfectly good bones and table scraps, and eat things we shouldn't.
We can blame The Tinker, who has led us away from the forest and savannah, tho we be not migratory, to all parts of the Earth, deserts hot and deserts frozen. He built us boats to cross the waters, cut us hides to conquor cold, he has moved mighty rivers to bring us water and he has built us all manner of shelter to keep us safe and warm.
Yet all that the Tinker has done for us pales in comparison to the contribution of the Linguist, who gave us our greatest and most powerful tool: language. So you scribes out there- don't be jealous of the Tinker. He owes you. Without language, your little community would be ruled by the biggest and strongest member- not often the wisest. Your community would not benefit from the inventions of Tinkers in other tribes and other lands.
So while the Tinker gave us weapons, the Linguist gave us peace and harmony. Harmony fingers am I holding up?
The origin of tinker was itinerant craftsmen who could patch a hole in a metal utensil such as a pot and do other lite metal crafts.
In northern CA is the days prior to the IBM PC, those who tinkered with electronics could all be found at Mike Quinns near the Oakland airport. His surplus business was housed in a T building dating to WWII. In the adjoining building Bill Godbout made S100 style computers. On a given day you could see the likes of George Morrow and others come and go. Some of this is Chronicled in the book "Hackers". At the counter was Vinnie the Bear who made summary judgment on the price of your gatherings. Mike Quinn had an attitude that was the stuff of legends. I once asked him how much a transformer was. He said, "How many do you want?" I responded, "One." Mike turned and walked the other way.
My older brother was just such a tinker, Roy. I'd follow him to different 'swap shops', and he'd gaze at motors and switches and gizmos with wires. He built radios and meters that clicked and buzzed and sparked and bit me if I touched them.
There was a stray alley cat that bugged him, so he built a hot plate and put the cat on it. The cat walked off before he could throw the switch. "Troof, hold this cat on that plate." I was glad to help- but not for long. BZZZAAPPP!!
Afro.
I don't think the cat felt a thing. He sauntered off.
I hate electricity.
With regards the word tinker:
It is hardly being co-opted. Historically, a tinker was a tinsmith. He made various household items from tin.