My Green Journey: The Tool Revolution is Upon US!

Clive Thompson wrote an interesting piece in Wired this month about reviving American innovation through our grassroots Do It Yourself revolution. I believe the web 2.0 revolution will allow us to figure out innovative solutions to a growingly complex and difficult future ahead of us.

Here is what Clive had to say;

"Why am I so inept? I used to do projects like this all the time when I was a kid. But in high school, I was carefully diverted from shop class when the administration decided I was college-bound. I stopped working with my hands and have barely touched a tool since. "

". . . it's a problem for

America

. We've lost our Everyman ability to build, maintain, and repair the devices we rely on every day. And that's making it harder to solve the country's nastiest problems, like oil dependence, climate change, and global competitiveness."

"If you can't get under the hood of the gadgets you buy, you're far more liable to believe the marketing hype of the corporations that sell them. "

"Neuroscientists have shown that working with your hands exercises different parts of your cerebrum than sitting and cogitating. "

"They aren't ripping open cars to see what's possible, the way those amateur ultra-mileage Prius hackers do (some of whom, by the way, have modded their hybrids to get 100 mpg)."

"A counterrevolution is afoot"

"Notably, all this is happening outside our broken educational system.

America

is healing itself at the grass roots — rediscovering the mental joy of making things and rearming itself with mechanical skills. "

So apparently as a developed society we've taken a short vacation from our DIY mentality and we dove headfirst into the information economy. It has brought about new, exciting, and beautiful technologies. Now we need to start incorporating a culture that is a hybrid of the two. It's a true win win situation if we can leverage our new information seeking/publishing abilities on the web and get start coming up with some real solutions to the coming climate crisis and resource depletion.

So here are some resources to do it yourself:
For plans and ideas:
Make Magazine