An interesting, well-written portrait about nowadays Maker Revolution from Michael S. Rosenwald on Washington post.

Recent studies show consumers now spend more money tweaking and inventing stuff than consumer product firms spend on research and development. It’s more than $3.75 billion a year in Britain, and U.S. studies under way now show similiar patterns. Makers are even morphing into entrepreneurs, with some of the best projects, including Kleinman’s, raising money for commercial development of self-funding Web sites such as Kickstarter, where anyone with a credit card can chip in to back cool ideas.

[…]“You think of the lone tinkerer in the shed in the ’50s and ’60s and you were pretty lucky to find anyone else interested in what you were doing,” said Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make Magazine. “Today you begin by putting your work online, and then people can seek you out and help. If you have an idea for a project, there are very few barriers to getting it done.”

via [washington post]