Thanks to the internet making it easier to share and an increased distaste for disposable culture, the early 2000s were a great time to be a creator. Hackerspaces (and soon makerspaces, but we’re jumping ahead) exploded worldwide, and people were sharing more and more of their work and how-to knowledge online. There had long been hobbyist magazines for various niche interests and crafting sections in magazines traditionally targeted at housewives and grandmotherly knitters, but there was a growing movement of younger creators, interested in learning to DIY, but often with an electronics twist, or an edgier, more youthful bent, and likely motivated at least in part by a desire to decrease consumption and disposable culture. There was a (diminishing, but still available) land of opportunity for print media to capitalize on that movement. Enter Make: magazine, in February 2005.
It’s easy to forget that the internet of 20 years ago was a very different place. People would post sections on their personal homepages with instructions for things they’d made (see this micro-claymore and cigar box guitar, both posted on the early Make: site). There were gobs of (usually phpbb-based) forums on every possible topic, and creators gathered on sites like ThinkCycle, Craftster, and Get Crafty. (You can find some of this retro vibe on Lettuce Craft.) We copiously tagged Flickr images with notes. (You technically can still do this, but who uses Flickr anymore, much less the notes feature?) Uploads were often limited by file sizes that we now consider meaningless. (I have an email from a friend during this era that says “I can’t send this to you because the darn file is 11 MB!” That was over Gmail’s limit. She ended up mailing me a CD.)
The original makezine.com mentioned “weblogs” and offered links via del.icio.us. It had RSS and Atom feeds, and the contact email address was to “webmaster@”. There weren’t unlimited video tutorials for everything you could dream of making–YouTube didn’t launch until February 2005.
Make’s promise from the launch of the magazine:
If it can be done, we will help you do it. We’ll help you make sense of all the technology that’s in your life. Make will have a Mobile section providing tips and advice on cell phones, PDAs, and GPS technology; a Home Entertainment section, including managing your digital music and installing home theater equipment; a Cars section looking at the intersection of computers and automobiles; an Online section looking at how power users are using Amazon, eBay, and Google, plus other services; an Imaging section, featuring digital cameras, Photoshop, and managing your photo; and a Computers section that looks at custom hardware as well as wireless and home networking.
In some ways, it feels like the heyday of maker culture has passed, but in reality, it’s continually evolving. Maker culture isn’t dead, and neither is Make:.
In fact, it’s celebrating the launch of Volume 92 with a live-streamed launch party on YouTube today starting at 7 p.m. Eastern time. For other anniversary celebations, you can follow along with retro article reposts and other nostalgia on Make:‘s Instagram. For history from the launch time, I recommend a listen to the most recent episode of Make:cast, featuring Dale Dougherty with original team members Mark Frauenfelder, Dave Albertson, Shawn Connolly, and Paul Spinrad, as well as current editor-in-chief Keith Hammond.
