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 * Let me know what you think....Ahhhh!**

__From Karin: (These are mostly in relation to your abstract)__ Some of your terms are vague and without reference: "the current trends", "these issues", "changing technologies" "technology becomes more ubiquitous" >> 2. What modes of (making/innovatoin) are in play and what are their futures? >> - What imaginaries sustain them and what are their futures?
 * In our conversation after class we fleshed these out some more and there seemed to be an binary in these spaces between innovation (for industry-like development) and making (in regards to skill sharing and community education/access spaces). And so I wonder if your research question might plug in to one of the questions thrown around in class this afternoon:
 * 1. What modes of (making/innovation) are in play and what motivates them? (i.e. why)
 * This would seem to play into the different sites you are interested in, but it might fall into the categorization dilemma, in which you just present x number of categories and describe them...

__From Guy:__
 * So in your abstract, it seems like the focus is on the impacts of changing technology, but from talking with you after class, it sounded like you might be more interested in changing imaginaries of technological empowerment, DIY, hacking, etc. It looks like "changing technology" is your dependent variable (can i use that phrase?) in this abstract, but it sounds like the causative thing you're getting at is something more complex and technosocial. Maybe?
 * Re: field sites, I totally support the idea of doing a bunch of different hacker/maker spaces, sort of à la Jon Cluck's investigation of different DIY Bio labs.
 * Heck yeah re: technological citizenship. I think that's a concept that could have some really fun play within these spaces, and elicit some faaaascinating articulations. Also, do you think it'd make sense to play off //regimes of making// against overarching production regimes (I bet there's a better word for this, but the entrenched ways in which consumer technologies are designed and produced, or the obduracy of large technologies/technological systems)? I guess...what's the relationship between making and production?

__From Kim:__
 * I like your core categories a lot, including "regimes of making," which would have you document how/where maker spaces become spaces of critical making. But I don't see your interview questions getting you what you need. What could you ask that would help you understand how a space cultivates/mandates critical sensibilities and practice? Perhaps questions about how the making work changes as it progresses -- because responsive to different kinds of stakeholder input, or because response to particular political conditions, for example. Do you know a critical making space when you see it? What does it look like? Have Ratto and created such spaces, or have the succeeded in being critical without regime/spatial support? Karin's questions above get to something similar, I think. I wonder how your conception of technological citizenship compares to the kinds of literacies we are after in eco-ed, which is a combination of media/environmental/science literacy (see http://ecoed.wikispaces.com/literacy+goals). And I'm with Guy on the abstract. Technology is cast as overly determining. Is this right? "The aim of this study to is advance understanding of the kinds of organizational structures and cultures that cultivate critical engagement with science, particularly through hands-on design and work with technology." You need to find a way to quickly describe what maker spaces are -- this is not in most reader's vernacular.

__From James:__

We had talked about the "critical consciousness" part after class and I had wondered how you would strengthen/defend this concept from charges of essentialism (i.e. Latour's "Has Critique Run out of Steam"?) while retaining concerns with social/environmental/etc. justice. Also: perhaps Dewey and his problem-evoked publics are relevant and Marres' Dewey-oriented "[|material participation]." This could be folded into technological citizenship or perhaps displace it as a core concept. I agree that you need some shorthand to describe what Maker spaces are, but it seems as though definitional challenges will be central to your project. I wonder if the literature on subculture and style would be important... How do Maker culture/Maker spaces make makers? Also: how do you account for/conceptually address the significant role of space/place...?

Also: This is my favorite field site listing : ) "The Internet aka Online communities aka my office"

__From Pedro:__

Sorry! I totally forgot about this. This looks really cool!

As I mentioned in Ned's class, Adorno on DIY could be helpful, probably as a foil. So, too, might some cultural studies stuff on punk, hip-hop, and DIY cultural production, which have different, but maybe sometimes parallel, concerns about politicization/depoliticization, empowerment/co-option, etc.

It might also be interesting to compare critical making to Marx's "alienated labor." You might already get at some of this in other ways, but it might be a useful way to talk about some of the ambiguities of making as a capitalist entrepreneurship, but also as a quasi-socialist labor practice (or something.. there is sharing of the means of production, control of one's own labor process, no wage, and ownership, I think, of one's products).