http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/11/chris-anderson-why-hes-leaving-digital-diy/3781/
...the process of becoming a Maker (and then a Maker entrepreneur) inspired the book. I started down the road of Making five years ago, beginning with projects with my kids and then going down the rabbit hole of open source electronics, robotics, and eventually drones (with the community site I set up, DIYDrones.com). That led to the creation of a company, 3D Robotics, with Jordi Munoz, who I had met online at DIY Drones, to make some of the technologies that the community was creating.
Neither Jordi and I knew anything more about drones than what we found online, yet in three years he and the team he assembled at 3D Robotics, who are mostly Mexican and Mexican/American engineers in their early 20s, built something amazing: two state-of-the art drone factories (one in San Diego and one in Tijuana). It's been thrilling to watch and be part of, and now it's big enough to need my attention full time. This is not just a passion, but it's become a real business. So my route from Maker hobbyist to entrepreneur, which I describe in the book, is now complete.
Some people hear the word "maker" and imagine we are going back to the past, a world of artisans using traditional tools to make craft products. From reading your book, that’s not exactly what you mean. You're talking about a blurring of what might be called the analog and digital worlds. Tell us more about how you see this playing out.
The "Maker Movement" is simply what happened when the web revolution hit the real world. The term, in its current sense, was first coined in 2005 by Dale Dougherty of the tech book publisher O’Reilly, to describe what he saw as a resurgence of tinkering, that great American tradition. But rather than isolated hobbyists in their garages the way it used to be, this was coming out of Web communities and increasingly using digital tools, from 3D printers, which were just then starting to be available for regular consumers, and to a new generation of free and easy CAD software programs. ...The world’s factories are now increasingly open to anyone via the web, creating what amounts to "cloud manufacturing." And huge Maker communities have grown around sites such as Kickstarter and Etsy. In Silicon Valley, the phrase is that "hardware is the new software." The web's powerful innovation model can now be applied to making real stuff. As a result, we’re going from the "tinkerer" phase of this movement to entrepreneurship, too. What began as a social revolution is starting to look like an industrial revolution.
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