Research - D.I.Y. culture

Sue Thomas, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
http://con.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/383.pdf

Democratic society claims to have opened up equal opportunity to people.
Jane Oh, "Oh, Chandelier?"
http://itp.nyu.edu/projects_documents/1179275356_paper.pdf

D.I.Y Movement

Do it yourself, often referred to by the acronym "DIY," is a term used by various
communities that focus on people creating things for themselves without the aid of
paid professionals. It reflects the frustration and criticism that arises in the modern
consumer culture setting the populace as passive buyer, not as an active owner of the
object. This complements with my study in modular systems — the building process
that the DIY movement offers is one of the important aspects in my project.
Through the DIY experience, people expect to gain personal involvement with the
objects they consume, occurring with the entire process of planning, getting
materials, and building the object. They value the contextual stories added to the
object, which differentiate the creation from any other products in the market.
There are many open source instructions available for DIY activities.
Makezine, Craftzine and Instructables are magazines and web blogs for open
source instructions. One of the merits for these sources is the easy access and
deliberate sharing among people. Stores such as Home Depot also have been doing a
successful business with the high demand of people who would get their own hands
dirty.
Many of the instructions for DIY are complicated and time consuming, which
discourages people from getting into the action. Compared to the DIY system,
modular platforms provide simpler and friendlier approaches to the playful
experience of creating own design. Modular systems, on the other hand, have less
flexibility on the choices of styles.


Do it yourself from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_it_yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIY_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_crafts_movement