Domestic maker brands: the household as social object.

In a not too distant future most of the people will be knowledge workers. That means that they will have to think for a living. Thinking means figuring a way to solve problems. Given a specific situation, how can you achieve a new desired state of things. If people are required to do this at work it is likely that they will apply the same mental processes at home to live better. 

If people have the capabilities to be creative at work for money and for someone else's benefit, then they are also capable to be creative at home for their own benefit. This will generate an explosion of new artifacts that people will create based on their unique needs and domestic circumstances. 

Technology is cheap enough these days that anyone can create what they need and want. Self-publishing (both print and online) can already solve all the communication projects you might have and self-manufacturing tools and services (from basic home construction to 3d) can already solve all the physical ones. 

Think about people creating their own posters to hang on the walls. People designing and building their own rings with 3D printing. People downloading a chair blueprint and adapting it to build a chair that fits their kitchen style. People compiling a cookbook with the recipes they try and cook at home and then creating an ebook out of it. People recording themselves on the piano and creating a music album to gift their friends and family. I am sure you get the point.

How can other people benefit from the richness and diversity of knowledge that is, and will be increasingly created in every household? What if I could get a copy of a children's book that my neighbor, who is a hobbyist illustrator, created for her three year old. What if I could get the recipe of a secret BBQ sauce recipe from someone in North Carolina? What if I could get the tips on how to maintain a garage door from someone in Frankfurt? 

Most of this bits of knowledge and artifacts are already out there today. Unfortunately they are scattered all over the internet: forums, yahoo questions, uploaded files, slideshare presentations, youtube videos, etc. This doesn't help the creators because it makes it harder for them to preserve and centralize the body of knowledge they have already created. It doesn't help either the rest of us because once we found something amazing out there it is very hard to find other things that this maker has done. 

A more natural way to collect and share these fabrications would be to do it organized around a household unit. People that share dwelling are usually intimately related and collaboration is usually inevitable. This face-to-face exchange of knowledge between makers results in a natural exchange of ideas and new projects. 

Taking the household as a social object makes it easier to document and discover related artifacts. And also to find out more about the thinking minds that are behind it. The intention behind browsing around a living unit can be manifold: get to know someone more through the stuff they create; reuse an existing creation in your own household; or simply learn about different wordly perspectives by means of examining the tangible captures of someone's thought process (Jay Doblin used to say that 'a product is frozen information'). 

Will we see future domestic brands in the near future? People documenting and sharing as a unit all the stuff that they create day after day? Will we see creative social networks aggregated around households? Will we see people profiting (even if this is done through micro payments) from their hobbies? Will we see families or domestic units invading the long tail of knowledge creation?

Photo: Thomas Allen