Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

by Chris Anderson

小狐 譯

Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

創客時代：新的工業革命

by Chris Anderson

小狐 譯

創客（Maker，又譯為“自造者”），指一群酷愛科技、熱衷實踐的人，他們不以贏利為目標、樂于分享技術、交流思想，把創意轉變為現實。

當下，創客運動風靡全球。去年6月17日美國總統奧巴馬在白宮舉辦了創客嘉年華活動并確定每年的6月18日為美國“制造日”。而美國著名科技雜志《連線》雜志的主編、暢銷書《長尾理論》的作者Chris Anderson在其新書《Makers: the New Industrial Revolution》直指創客將成為新的工業革命。到底“創客”有多大的能耐？我們直接節選了Chris Anderson的書，各位先睹為快。

Back in the early 1940s my grandfather had a great idea. Noting the obsession Californians have with perfectly green front lawns, he decided that what they needed was an automatic1)sprinklersystem. He lavished time and love on it, inventing this and fine-tuning that, and eventually came up with what was essentially an electric clock that could be timed to turn water valves on or off at given times of the day and night. Patent number 2311108 was duly filed in 1943, at which point my grandfather started knocking on manufacturers’ doors. It was a long,2)arduousprocess. Finally, in 1950, after endless discussions, the Moody Rainmaster hit the stores. It earned my grandfather a modest income.

在 20世紀40年代早期，我祖父有個很棒的想法。自從發現加利福尼亞人癡迷綠油油的前院草坪后，他就認定他們所需要的是一套自動灑水系統。他在這套系統上傾注了大量的時間和熱情，不停創新并精心調試，最后制作出了最為關鍵的電子鐘，無論在白天還是黑夜，都能夠在指定的時間里打開或是關上水閥。1943年，祖父適時申請到了專利號：2311108，同時他開始拜訪各大制造商。這個過程漫長而艱辛。最終，在1950年，經過沒完沒了的商討，穆迪雨閥投入市面，為我祖父帶來了一筆不太多的收入。

1) sprinkler [?spr??kl?] n. 灑水車，灑水裝置

2) arduous [?ɑ?dj??s] adj. 費勁的，辛勤的

Recently, I decided to follow in his footsteps, while adding a little 21st-century know-how to the mix. Online, I found a few like-minded souls interested in producing an improved water sprinkler. We used3)opensource softwareto help us create a sprinkler system not only capable of being operated remotely via an app by worried gardeners on holiday, but also sophisticated enough to factor in the latest local weather forecasts before deciding whether to switch the system on or off. We then sent our designs to an assembly house, who duly came up with a smart-looking fnished product. It has proved quite popular. It took my grandfather a decade and a small fortune to perfect his device and market it. It took us a few months and $5,000.

And that4)in a nutshellis the Maker movement—harnessing the Internet and the latest manufacturing technologies to make things. The past 10 years have been about discovering new ways to work together and offer services on the web. The next 10 years will, I believe, be about applying those lessons to the real world. It means that the future doesn’t just belong to Internet businesses founded on virtual principles, but to ones that are frmly rooted in the physical world.

項目平臺立足與農產品行業，貫穿整條鮮果農產品的生產、銷售、流通、消費領域，服務范圍廣，服務領域實用性強。

It’s almost a cliché that anyone with a sufficiently good software idea can create a fabulously successful company on the web. That’s because there are practically no barriers preventing entry to entrepreneurship online: if you’ve got a laptop and a credit card, you’re in business. Manufacturing has traditionally been regarded as something else entirely. But over the past few years, something remarkable has begun to happen. The process of making physical stuff has started to look more like the process of making digital stuff.

最近，我決定追隨他的步伐，再加上點21世紀的技術秘訣。在網上，我找到了和我一樣對改良灑水系統有興趣的同好。我們使用開源軟件的幫助，設計出一套新的灑水系統，不僅能夠讓度假時心懷憂慮的園丁們通過一個應用程序進行遠程控制，而且還精良設計至加入當地天氣實時預報，方便用家決定是打開還是關閉系統。……