TSMG - The Foundations of the Successful Screenplay

rabble.ca columnist Murray Dobbin details the harm Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing to the political and social fabric of Canada in a new essay commissioned by The Council of Canadians. This article is an excerpt taken from the essay, the second in a 10-part series on Harper's assault on democracy.

The first prorogation of Parliament, Dec. 4, 2008

rabble.ca columnist Murray Dobbin details the harm Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing to the political and social fabric of Canada in a new essay commissioned by The Council of Canadians. This article is an excerpt taken from the essay, the first in a 10-part series on Harper's assault on democracy.

An introduction

On Jan. 23, 2010, thousands of Canadians in over 60 towns and cities demonstrated their anger over the shutting down of Canada's Parliament by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. At the same time, over 220,000 Canadians also joined a Facebook protest called Canadians Against the Prorogation of Parliament.

It's a wet Saturday afternoon at a hacker convention in an industrial section of Hamilton, Ontario. Treven Watson's Lucite badge is flashing: blue, green and red. The LED lights are controlled by a circuit in the laser-etched ID. That little bundle of electronics is about to be probed and reprogrammed by Watson and the three dozen other coders, anxious to make it do anything but alternate primary colours.

"There's a tradition in hacker conventions of making badges that can be expanded, can be hacked to do other things," said Watson.

Watson is a member of the Hamilton hacker space think|haus. Attendees at the convention each got their own badge and spent hours seeing who could hack it best.

If you weren't making things 100 years ago -- you'd be dead. Your home, your food, your clothes and even your toys were all made by you or someone you knew. Somewhere along the way, humans seem to have forgotten that we were makers, and instead became consumers.

Now, when some people build, sew and bake they are making a conscious choice to return to our maker roots. This movement is Maker Culture. Today, makers challenge the mainstream and make instead of buy.

What used to be a necessity is now a lifestyle. But how were these people inspired, how did they learn and how did they get to where they are now?

Here are the stories of some modern day makers.

Sewing it all together

Neil Gershenfeld has been known to make some bold predictions about the future. But even by his standards, this one was a doozy.

"Twenty years from now," he told a 2006 conference in Berkeley, "we'll have Star Trek replicators that can make anything."

You remember the replicator -- the one that provided Captain Picard with his "cup of Earl Grey tea, hot," with a simple verbal prompt? It might sound like jet-age fantasy, but Gershenfeld was absolutely serious with his reference.