Supporting Cultures of Making: Technology, Policy, Visions, and Myths

Recent HCI research has linked social policy to design, e.g., in issues such as public safety, privacy, and social justice. One area where policy, technology, and design intersect is in the vision of the creative economy. In that vision, creativity, distinct local/regional cultural practices, technology, and entrepreneurship synergistically produce social innovation on a scale sufficient to drive economies. Culture and creative industries (CCI) policy specifies how governments intervene to support such clusters. Maker cultures are seen as central to this vision, but comparatively little is known about how makers produce culture. We offer a critical analysis of several encounters between CCI policy in Taiwan and its maker scene. These encounters reveal misalignments that undercut efforts intended to support making. We propose that supporting any creative culture, including making, entails a serious commitment to understanding its culture, including its cultural contents and their means of production. We further argue that scholarly rigor in cultivating cultural appreciation is just as fundamental as scholarly rigor in empirically representing cultural practices when it comes to pursuing such a cultural understanding.