End-User Revolution

Car tuning probably has one of the longest history of end-user involvment, and it looks like with Toyota announcing the Scion tC base spec, they're going directly to the end-users. $15,000 for it, and it's clear that they cut corners in all the places end-users would have put in their 2 cents anyway. no rims, subpar interiors, etc... Yummy...

So I just came across an interesting phenemonon... While it's just one instance, I thought it was significant enough to mention. According to an article posted on Gamastutra on the latest on PS3, Sony is going to be allowing homebrew Linux games to be developed more easily for the PS3. This coming from a company who goes out of their way to make this hard to do for thier PSP is pretty interesting. Are they proactively taking the steps to prepare themselves to adopt to the wave of change and help fuel the end-user revolution or is this just a desperate attempt at implementing a solution that may eventually prove to be somewhat half-assed as a marketing stunt?

It seems that since the dawn of time we human beings have been making things. The distinction between producer and consumer or manufacturer and end-user are somewhat artificial. The nature provides us with ingredients, human beings somehow pick up on things and start to build stuff out of them. That seems like the essence of "end-user" involvement. The gap simply has become greater as the compleixty of manufacturing has grown ever more great. With recent efforts to close that gap, it seems to have tagged along that artificial titles of "manufacturer/producer" and "end-user/consumer".

Mick pointed me to an interesting bird called the bower bird which seems to be exceptionally interested in building things. Well, "exceptional" because it's very human-like. They build things to get chicks. ;) You should read it, it's quite fascinating. ^^

Why do we like to make things? What is our fascination? Is it the challenge? Is it the control? Is it the power? Is it the curiosity? Is it in the genes and evolution just happened to keep those willing to "innovate" alive longer until the economy as a whole was able to sustain those less willing to innovate? Does the fact that companies are providing tools to build things significant? If so, in what sense? Is it simply a nice-to-have for the end-uers willing to innovate? or is it a real booster for those who were less willing? What about the people who will build tools out of those tools to help others who are even less willing to build stuff (wow, what a sentence!)? I leave you with my hero Feynman's quote:

What I cannot create, I do not understand.