The maker movement in Europe: empirical and theoretical insights into sustainability

Abstract

In recent years, ICT has revolutionized content creation and communications. Today, everybody with Internet access can produce digital content composed of virtual ‘bits’ and make it instantly available across the globe. The same is now happening to manufacturing for all people with access to tools like 3D printers. This inter- changeability of bits and atoms is being called the maker movement, which started as a community-based, socially-driven bottom-up movement but is today also impacting mainstream manufacturing through increased efficiencies, distributed local production and the circular economy. The maker movement thus has significant promise for increasing social, economic, environmental and technical sustainability, but is it currently living up to this potential? The European-funded MAKE-IT project has examined these postulates through in-depth qualitative and quantitative empirical research.

Prosumer Concept: Current Status and Possible Future Developments

“…El perfil del prosumer está evolucionando constantemente para adaptarse a la sociedad actual. No obstante, estudios previos han establecido ciertas pautas comunes entre el público prosumer [4]. Se identifica que los hombres jóvenes dirigen la mayoría de iniciativas maker.…”

Sustainable in Action: From Intention to Environmentally Friendly Practices in Makerspaces Based on the Theory of Reasoned Action

“…The term refers to people who are producers and consumers in one. From this new role the assumption is derived that making is particularly suited to create awareness among makers of issues such as renewable materials, resource consumption and product lifespan, that is sustainable product development (e.g., Millard et al, 2017;Schoneboom, 2018). People come together in makerspaces to share ideas, tools and knowledge and transform them into artifacts.…”

The environmental value and impact of the Maker movement—Insights from a cross‐case analysis of European maker initiatives

“…This paper follows the definition of the Maker movement as described by the MAKE‐IT project, which situates the movement at the intersection between four overlapping fields of activity (c.f. Figure ; Millard, Unterfrauner, Voigt, Katsikis, & Sorivelle, ): Digital fabrication: The affordability of digital fabrication tools like 3D printers, laser cutters, or computer nummerical control (CNC) machines places these tools on peoples' desks, in maker spaces, and private homes and opens up new possibilities for personal fabrication (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, ), where makers create their own designs or adapt available and shared designs on online platforms to their personal needs. Following the statements of Anderson () and Rifkin (), that is the cornerstone of the next industrial revolution, from centralised to decentralised production where products are produced locally and on‐demand. Collective Awareness Platforms for Social Innovation (CAPS): This initiative by the European Commission (Sestini, ) aims at creating awareness of emerging sustainability challenges and the role that citizens play in order to address them in collective actions and solutions.…”