Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff
Couple of points.<p>When I was a lad, making electronics meant you could listen to shortwave radio or talk to people around the world, when there was little other opportunity.<p>Plus, things like cars were still hackable with a few transistors and passive components, you could make a customised indicator timer, or turbo timer or what ever, and it was probably way cheaper if you knew what you were doing.<p>Fast forward, very little you can now make is cheaper, or creates a functionality not otherwise available retail&#x2F;off the shelf.<p>Now for me, it was great - my dad was a radio amateur, I grew up with the those things, he lectured at uni and I had access to PDP-8 and 11 when no one had a computer at home and most people interacted with punch cards.<p>I spent literally years of my younger life tinkering and discovered&#x2F;learned by direct exploration and experimentation all sorts of things eg the rectification of copper oxide, Q factor and how to get it and use it, all the things you can use as earthing and antennas in radio systems (some pretty strange things in there), I wrote and sold Atari 400 games when I was 13 on, learning things like how to write a floating point library in a 6502 in minimal space, create physics engines for games, just to name a few, the list goes on.<p>Now I have worked as an electrical engineer designing and building large and small industrial power and control systems for over 30 years.<p>Most days I draw down on some former hobby or tinkering experience in some way in my work.<p>Not sure the maker movement we have seen recently will create the same trajectory for too may others, maybe I am wrong, but a lot of what I did was because there were no equivalent consumer goods and the best info available was at the local library or maybe the odd magazine if you were lucky.