I’ve talked about the four epochs of making over the past several weeks: Making By People, Making For People, and Making Without People. We’re now facing another epoch in making, a shift where institutions no longer completely control the means of production. People now take over the reigns of production, much like our past, but mass distribution is still a possibility. And in many cases the institution is still involved in the making, but as a facilitator rather than a controller. This is an epoch I call Making With People.

At the heart of this shift is participation. But this type of making is fundamentally different than what institutions are used to. It’s a special type of participative process where people modify things in ways that extend them into unintended design spaces. They adapt and merge things into entirely new possibilities, with or without consent from the original creator.
[So Cal 1970 Choppers by bcmacsac1 from flickr] These initial acts of change become widespread and groups of people formalize to support ongoing efforts. The groups eventually grow, and their efforts are exposed to much broader audiences, brining in new members that are often less savvy than the original members. Eventually, large institutions that are the original creators take notice and begin to respond (sometimes positively, but often negatively). This cyclical process ensures growth in the movement while fundamentally changing the process and actors who do the making.

There are two primary actors in this process.

• Originating Enterprises: Typically large institutions that possess the means of production, usually for commercial purposes.
   
  
• Adapting Enterprises: Groups of people that interact with, and adapt, the product of the originating enterprises by reshaping them for their own needs.
   
  

At this point, I’m describing the shift that’s been underway for several years now (more prominently now than in the past decade or two). The implications are significant, particularly for today’s businesses that only know control. The weak institution that are unable to adapt and embrace these new behaviors will perish, while those that can adapt will thrive.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that I’ve already addresses an important point that is likely a factor: Everything Old Is New Again. The behaviors driving this emergence of participation by the adapting enterprises are not simply a product of the rapid, technology fueled society in which we live today. Rather, they are ingrained behaviors long present in humanity only being made visible again in recent times.

In the coming weeks I’ll share examples of how this shift is hapening.

In this third epoch of making, making starts to look familiar to most of us. I initially described Making Without People as: mechanized manufacturing and the assembly line place the means of production into the hands of the enterprise, initiating the concept of "the consumer."

As these communities, cultures, and societies continued to advance, another significant shift in the process of making took place—a movement toward mass efficiency. When organizations emerged—the enterprise—they took over most making, further distancing people from the process.

This shift coincided with the Industrial Age (Toffler’s Second Wave), which stripped away the intimate interaction between the individual and the purpose of the object being made—essentially removing the individual from the process altogether.
[Women on Assembly Line Stamping Hams from Wisconsin Historical Society on flickr] Mechanized manufacturing processes displaced making from the community of use to centralized remote locations. This displaced making by known community members to unknown people and machines—from specialization and division of labor to the assembly line.

Industrialization changed the focus of making from the needs of individuals to the processes required to enable mass production and distribution. Efficiency increased dramatically and organizations grew significantly, initiating the displacement of the specialist in favor of the operationally superior enterprise. Mass production and distribution capabilities meant that industrial enterprises achieved a greater influence over individuals, resulting in a substantial increase in the standardization of usage. Over time, individuals saw their autonomy diminish as the enterprise achieved a position of control, dictating what was made and how it would be used. Dominant and encroaching for the past 100 years, this type of making turned us all into ‘consumers.’

We’ve lived quite a while with the industrialization of making and the autonomy of institution that control the making. It took the democratizing power of the Web and social technologies to initiate the fourth epoch, which is just beginning now. More on that in my next post.

The second epoch of making, Making For People, is a continuation from my previous post. I initially described this epoch as: division of labor, specialists emerge to focus on key skills, initiating the marketplace for trade.

To expand further, as communities, cultures, and societies became more advanced, the making process experienced a shift. This meant different behaviors and expectations from the makers. Specialists began making things for others, choosing to focus on a single discipline.

Societies developed technology and specialized knowledge in areas like farming, alchemy, construction, medicine, and science.
[Jalalabad Bazaar from Valodja on flickr] This necessitated certain skilled individuals to focus their efforts in one of these areas, resulting in higher quality of the things they made. Specialized skills also allowed for greater efficiency and consistency in the process of making, resulting in the early stages of product standardization. This shift allowed people to focus on the tasks they were best qualified to perform, while ensuring that other specialists supplied the remainder of goods and services everyone had to supply on their own. So, in the previous epoch (Making By People) every person essentially had to make their own hunting tools, medical care procedures, shelter, clothing, etc. In the second epoch, everyone specialized to provide goods and services to one another. This epoch largely occurs during the Agrarian Age (still Toffler's First Wave), spilling over into the early Industrial Age.

Naturally, this exposed a new level of collaboration, almost organic in way. It initiated the emergence of new interactions in the form of the marketplace, where specialists competed for the attention of individuals who might need their products. Monetary economic models also emerged as trade advanced and inherent markets developed to stabilize comparative values for various goods and services. Individual competition kept over-standardization at bay, forcing specialists to continuously consider the needs of individuals to remain relevant in the marketplace. This consideration was also reinforced because the context of use and the process of making still occurred in close proximity to the patron—the specialists lived in small communities where they shared the lifestyle of the individuals who used their product.

This closeness and empathy for the patron is lost in today's world (for now), the third epoch (which I'll talk about in another post).

As I mentioned in my previous post, Making By People is the first epoch of making. I described it as: an era with no means of production, every individual must make and procure everything they need to survive.

In this first epoch, during the early human cultures and before the emergence of specialization and the division of labor, things were made by the people who used them. The building of a hut, the crafting of a plow, the creation of clothing, all represent processes undertaken by an individual who personally possessed the needs or values that demanded the creation of a product.
[Two Ox Plowing from JimPatton on flickr] This time period aligned with the late part of the Hunter-Gatherer Age and spanned into the Agrarian Age, similar to Toffler's First Wave.

Individuals had to devise the appropriate design, gather the necessary materials, and then engage in the process of making the things that they needed. The maker decided how well their needs and values were addressed. The context of use determined what was made—on one’s property, in the field, in the home—typically by a single person or a small group.

We still see these behaviors among nomadic tribes that exist today. Collaboration is specific, contextual, and immediate as individuals develop the thing they need with little or no outside influence. So, the next time you take that coat hanger and bend it into a hook to hang your plant or make something bizarre our of duct tape, remember you ancestors.

I've been thinking about how the dialogue between institutions and constituents has changed quite a bit over time and how that relates to the concept of making. I think you can break the participants of making down into three categories (keep in mind that when I refer to things, products, or making, I'm referring to what is made--an artifact, service, system, environment, communication, etc., 'product' doesn't necessarily mean a physical object.):

The first type of participant, the individual, is a person who uses that which is made and in some cases is the maker of things (typically for themselves or close affiliates). The second participant, the specialist, is an artisan or craftsman with highly developed skills that yields products created on behalf of the individual. The third participant, the enterprise, is a formal or semi-formal group of people engaged in an organizational effort to make things.

These types of participants align with the shifts in ages of human history (hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial). But what's really interesting is how in today's information age, all three still apply. These shifts in the act of making fall into four distinct periods:

The 4 Epochs of Making

1. Making By People—No means of production, every individual must make and procure everything they need to survive.
    
   


2. Making For People—Division of labor, specialists emerge to focus on key skills, initiating the marketplace for trade.
    
   


3. Making Without People—Mechanized manufacturing and the assembly line place the mans of production into the hands of the enterprise, initiating the concept of "the consumer."
    
   


4. Making With People—Production is democratized, allowing any person to make (still in the early phase).
    
   

This leads me to the conclusion that what ever the next 'age' is (Collaboration? Social? Innovation?), it seems that this hierarchy of participants starts to reverse to the individual maker at the top, while still retaining all of the benefits and economies of scale that come from the enterprise model. When we get to a point where you can print 3D objects and circuit boards at home to make your own products, the dynamics and role of the enterprise will be radically different than the slight discomfort institutions feel today.