The Maker Movement's potential for Education and more

"Tinkering was once a solid middle-class skill. It was how you made your life better. You got a better home, you fixed your car, you did a lot of things. We've kind of lost some of that, and tinkering is on the fringe instead of in the middle today.

The software community is influencing manufacturing today, said Dougherty, including new ways of thinking about it. "It's a culture. I think when you look at 'MAKE' and MakerFaire, this is a new culture, and it is a way to kind of redefine what this means." It's about seeing manufacturing as a "creative enterprise," not something "where you're told to do something but where you're invited to solve a problem or figure things out."

This emergent culture is one in which makers create because of passion and personal interest. "People are building robots because they want to," Dougherty said. "It's an expression of who they are and what they love to do. When you get these people together, they really turn each other on, and they turn on other people."