Adafruit CEO Limor Fried named Entrepreneur magazine Entrepreneur of 2012
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I first met her IRL at a Boston 2600 meeting too, at the Cambridgeside Galleria. IIRC she was being escorted around by Rogue Agent and Sarah Gordon.
Already knew her on irc +hack/#hack back from when she was 'lem0n', which Deth Veggie still calls her (he still calls me by one of my old handles too).
(I used a bunch of handles back then, on irc mostly gfm or geo)
This isn't a flame - I'm just surprised that the application of spin managed to produce such a ton of noise.
Were you selling kits and tools to people who might not have previously thought of themselves as makers, making it super easy to jump in and get started? This is what I think she's got the attention for.
Everyone sold the tools, kits and parts already. All that had been achieved is the application of hype and turning a bunch of prepackaged modules into a way of excusing the user from having to know what the hell they are doing.
It's turned engineering into painting by numbers powered by social hype.
I think you're grossly undervaluing that.
Painting by numbers, as goofy as it seems, allows relatively non-skilled people to create approximations of art. For some, that's enough. For others, that taste of making a painting motivates them to want to do more. Just getting people to pick up a paint brush and mess around with some paints can be an amazing trigger.
The social aspect may help people see that, having assembled some basic Arduino thing, they could make it do a few other cool things, and other people like themselves (i.e. non-geeks) have done it, and will show them how.
Sounds like you're actually embarrassed that she succeeded where you did not.
> It's turned engineering into painting by numbers powered by social hype.
Like the iPad is "just" a big iPhone.
Most people who benefit from these sorts of products don't have a firm grasp of math and engineering to start with. Our education sucks in the US. Giving them a helping hand is a terrific way to swell the ranks of STEM professionals and introduce people to solving problems they would never have considered otherwise.
To shit on this is the most deplorable, counterproductive elitism.
Just teach them engineering! Not pussy foot around and molly coddle them.
Some people find the idea of engineering and/or mathematics intimidating. If approached in the right way, it will 'click' for them, or at the very least their fears can be assuaged (allowing them to pursue higher learning). I take two issues with your posts here:
1) From your posts here, your approach sounds like you want to 'beat some engineering fundamentals into them.' You say that you've mentored others, so I can't believe that this is actually your approach, but your posts come across this way. This may be at lease some of the reason that people are reacting the way they are to you.
2) You seem to be lamenting the fact that some people will work on these kits, and never go further with the 'higher learning' aspect. This is to be expected. There will never be a way to convert 100% of those curious into the One True Path of Engineering Enlightenment(tm). At the very least, the people that only dabble will get past the idea that all of this 'technology stuff' is some sort of voodoo magic that the majority of the population seems to believe.
I want people to react to this because I think the issue requires some consideration. We're losing and compartmentalising knowledge to the point that people have no idea what they're really doing any more.
There is no one true path of engineering enlightenment but there is some magic when someone actually really understands what they're doing.
I know that my entry to electronics was assembly workshops run by the local university at a science fair. Every year you could buy an electronic kit and assemble it (following instructions) into something that did something (normally it was fairly useless). I don't think I understood what was happening in that kit at all, but it introduced me to the concept of electronics as something that you could work with.
I think the problem is you're assuming that the users would otherwise know more, when in fact it's more likely that if they weren't provided the tools by adafruit they'd know even less about electronics.
Can you explain to me what is embarrassing to you?
Is it the making money part?
Is it the understanding a market and serving it part?
Is it the education and knowledge sharing to better energize and expand the market part?
Is it the persistence, perseverance and timing part?
Is it the creation of a legion of folks who never would have participated had they not been given the encouragement and clear marketplace part?
Is it the successful marketing part?
Or is it some other part that I have failed to mention? We live in a world where people made billions selling tobacco, blood diamonds, sub-prime mortgages and Justin Bieber albums. But even without those, I can see very little embarrassing about an entrepreneur channeling passion into advocacy and sales of products customers clearly value.
I find it embarrassing in the same way as I find computer science portrayals in movies embarrassing. Hax0r the planet etc...
Making money - selling overpriced modules and branded crap for way more than marginal profit (compared to say RS/Farnell/Digikey) and shipping an identity rather than tools to solve problems.
Understanding the market - actually they created a new market full of flashing LED cube machines and crap which actually performs no useful function other than to make other participants in the marketed identity look cool. About the most intelligent use for all of this I've seen (which isn't served elsewhere) is a computer controlled cannabis farm and that isn't exactly going to serve the intelligence of the person who built it well [1]
Education - there is very little going on there. Every person I've seen jump into this comes crawling to me for advice but then shits a brick the moment something more complicated than a 4 banger calculator is pulled. You know what a complex number is right? What do you mean you don't understand why that 10 ohm 1/4W resistor smoked across a 12v source - do you know what Ohms law is? The answer is usually "no - we just googled and copied the picture".
Persistence, perseverance, timing? None are relevant.
Marketing - the bugbear of the whole thing. They created an identity which actually serves the participants badly.
Actually you just nailed it - it is equivalent to selling Justin Bieber albums.
[1] Sub-rant - the hacks I've seen people use including twist-n-tape mains cables are going to kill someone one day...
Says the guy who gave up the space way back in the 90's while others get magazine stories. Sour grapes are rough man, I'm sorry. But you only embarrass yourself went you vent it so publicly.
I won't bother with the rest. You're deriving a lot of self-esteem from your knowledge of things that others don't have. But rather than rejoicing in the spread of that knowledge, you resent anyone who dilutes its scarcity.
People start small. Things aren't easy. Not everyone gets to the end. But I'm glad there are those who are willing to roll the dice and hope they can make a bit of money bridging a very wide gulf of knowledge and know-how.
I'm not driving self esteem - I'm just well equipped to say that you can't start without knowing the basics. I actually spent nearly 8 years as an engineering mentor, teaching others so I spread my knowledge. I also sit and help people but to be honest sometimes it's hopeless as they just don't have the fundamentals and aren't interested.
My problem is that the fundamentals are completely wiped out by the whole Maker movement in favour of short-cutting and getting things done, regardless of how dangerous or stupid they are.
I went from not knowing anything beyond hooking an LED up to a battery, to being published in EDN (for my brain-computer interface hacking) and talking at BlackHat (for my electronic lock hacking) in the space of a year. I didn't do it by learning the fundamentals -- I did it by jumping in and experimenting. I screwed up along the way, repeatedly, but I learned it very well.
Any time you say "you can't start without <insert learning method here>", you're almost definitely wrong, unless your goal is to be a surgeon.
Unfortunately, I observe the same trend - the whole generation of current 15-20 are shortcutting as a life style. Instead of engineering/making things, I observe this in other areas - finance, economics, accounting, math, stats... Sad to say my son is a good example here.
True knowledge is rotting.
The only advantage is that if you know your shit, then you're in an incredibly better situation than anyone else.
with all your potential to teach and share your vast electronics knowledge, why stick around in finance? there isn't enough people willing to dedicate their time helping. snarky-commenting on hackernews does not change things - actual work does. write some articles, posting tutorials and ship cool kits - join in!
Hahah, that's exactly the configuration I used to make fuses for rocket engines we were building with friend in high school. 10 ohm resistor on 12V burned quite nicely - and well enough to ignite the fuel.
Building for entertainment isn't useless or somehow less important than making useful tools to solve problems. Remember what fun was like? Some people enjoy making simple toys.
But there is a definite upper ceiling I hit for the projects I want to build because I don't have the background. Complex numbers, signal processing, etc - I don't have any of that fundamental stuff as a software guy.
I can write assembler, but I get nervous when trying to implement a PWM because I just don't get it.
It is frustrating to try to learn. All of the kits and guides are tailored for newcomers. I don't even know where to begin as someone who is fairly technically competent, and who has debugging skills, but is missing a chunk of math and theory and rote practice relevant for hardware hacking. Do you know how long it took me to figure out what "Vcc" meant on a datasheet?
So guys like me love these modules because it lets me create my raspberry pi party trick that responds to tweets. (blog post forthcoming.) Or my MIDI-controlled glockenspiel. But your point stands that there is a whole world of innovation that I can conceive of, but cannot put into practice, because you can only go so far with an Ethernet shield.
My raspberry pi twitter device ran out of batteries halfway through the party - I don't know enough to design something more efficient.
So. While I can agree with your points, short of enrolling in my local EE program, what is one to do?
With all the free resources out there, it's probably best to do the following. This is my personal recommendation and it's what I throw people towards who want a solid understanding of the subject:
1. Start with Khan Academy and do at least up to the end of Linear Algebra. Make sure you cover trig as well. Do the first few sections on arithmetic with a calculator or skip them if you can't be bothered. Arithmetic isn't all that important in maths. Grab a reasonably new Casio calc with solver and calculus functions such as FX-991ES as well.
2. Pick up the NEETS guides from [1] and work through the first module [2] until you get a rough understanding of what electricity is. Some eye openers in there which surprise a lot of people.
3. Grab a copy of "the art of electronics" and the associated student guide and work through the latter using the former as a reference ONLY (seriously the latter is an awesome book which contains some real practical hints and tips that are missing from everything else). The main art of electronics is a disjoint mess of information but the student guide uses the right approach.
4. Move slowly to AC circuits, referring back to Khan Academy if you get stuck on the maths and NEETS as the fundamental information.
5. Rinse and repeat. You will be able to chose your own path when you get through those bits.
Also, best advice in the world - buy an analogue oscilloscope - an old 25MHz one can be had on ebay for virtually nothing. It doesn't have to be a nice one - just something that works. I've got one that is 35 years old that is fine - it cost me $20! Ignore those digital ones - they're a piece of shit unless you want to spend upwards of $500.
You can probably do the whole series in a year or so with $100-200 investment which is less than an iPhone.
If you get royally stuck, visit http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/ and there are plenty of us who will help you out.
[1] http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm
[2] When I say work through the modules, I mean buy some components and actually build some stuff and play with it rather than just mindlessly sap up the theory.
Adafruit and newer companies of this ilk fill a need for us oldtimers and the newcomers. Many of my old sources of various parts and kits are dead, evolved or just didn't handle the transition to the internet well.
The problem is no-one knows how to use the parts unless they are assembled into kits.
The whole maker movement solves this by making kits, therefore raising the bedrock abstraction for knowledge way too high.
The better solution would be to teach people how to use the parts, which is my problem.
Huh? If anything, in the good old days, there were WAY more kits than there are today. Besides that, hobby electronics has a long history of doing stuff like "Here's a schematic, here's a BOM, and here's a paragraph on the 'theory of operation' that assumes a solid understanding of electronics and a bunch of domain-specific stuff. Good luck!" -- Pretty much the same as it is today, except we have resources like http://electronics.stackexchange.com/ to answer our questions. Wish that stuff was around when I was younger.
Kits just save you the trouble of making your own PCBs and hunting down parts on Digikey.
We had something better than stack exchange - we got an electronics book and a maths book out of the local library and studied it, understood it and developed mental models, rather than expecting a canned answer to plug in somewhere.
And yes I have scars from ferric chloride accidents.
> studied it, understood it
Sure, some people are looking to plug-and-play answers, but that will always be the case. You can't solve that by telling the kids to 'get off your lawn.'
If your attitude is that you know best what other people should do, you won't get very far. They don't want to plow through a book, they want to build something that does something. Who are you to tell them that they can't?
You say that getting them interested with a kit is useless because they will bail as soon as they hit some math. Well, they're certainly no worse off than if they hadn't built the kit, which is the alternative.
You're making a big assumption. Not everybody has the time to design, source and test a complex system from the component level. (Nor do programmers drop down to the machine code level for every project.) Many kit builders have the background, but still must juggle other priorities in their life.
Ideally folks should learn what's going on at the component level. With the free resources available online, that's easier than in the past. But no one should be forced to go through Boylestad or NEET just to play with a LED.
Should all programmers learn assembly? Sure. Should all programmers be forced to learn assembly before anything else? No.
Funny, I've designed and built from scratch all sorts of advanced analog and mixed-signal circuits using my "secret" EE knowledge. I've also built kits from Adafruit. I had a great time doing both, and do not consider them mutually exclusive.
I don't think the ignorance of _other_ people is your problem.
Just because something is first doesn't mean it is best. Limor took something cool and made it awesome, and you can be sure that in a generation or two someone else will take her work further.
I grew up hacking on Heathkits and reading Forrest Mimms books and just as Mimms did for me as a child, Adafruit's products turn a new generation on to the fun, creativity and power locked up in understanding electronics.
The fact of the matter is that DIY electronics was fading out by the 1990's in no small part due to the ever tightening noose of proprietary technology and planned obsolecense in consumer electronics. In this environment, Adafruit was able to make soldering sexy and fabrication fashionable; how could anyone find fault in that?
No awesome here if you ask me. It is packaged in shiny and shipped out of the door.
Forrest Mimms books were crap to be honest. They were recipe books with very little practical use past stringing together hacks and full of all sorts of errors. Sort of a precursor to this.
I think you were brought up with the electronics assembly culture, not the electronics design culture. The two are very different.
I got my start in engineering by reading the manuals of my father's HeathKit projects and by building a simple computer using a Z80 and a few other chips that I got through mail order and Radio Shack. Back then, having a personal computer was much less common and I could imagine building something roughly comparable to what was on the market (Altair, Apple II, C64,...). A generation before me tinkered with Ham Radio.
Today, HeathKit is out of business and Radio Shack sells overpriced consumer goods. Our electronics is now much more sophisticated and there exists a much wider gap between what one can do from on their own vs. commercial products. I think there was a dry period after the rise of PCs and before the maker movement, where there wasn't much opportunity for a hardware hobbyist. Limor and others like her are coming up with really interesting projects that are still relevant in today's world. I appreciate their re-imagination and invigoration of this hobby and hope to get my son interested when he's a bit older.
Be happy! A rising tide raises all ships (boats / skiffs / rafts / swimmers / floating bathtubs).
You might want to actually read the first sentence of the article you just linked to. meaty is not experiencing "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others".
I was truly sad that as my kids were growing up the world was actively conspiring to keep the knowledge about how things work away from them. In the US at least there is a tremendous amount of narrative that rides along on the 'don't try this at home' meme. Silly stuff like learning to build campfires and sharpen a pocket knife, and stuff like changing the timing of your vehicle's ignition. The problem with that is that kids believe it. They start believing its somebody else's job to invent the new things, to think outside the box, and to do stuff.
Into that sadness walked folks who said "You know, I'm going to make stuff you can tinker with." "I'm going to sell kits for people to make silly things and amazing things and I'm going to provide all the information they need to modify or improve or destroy them." They needed a word for people who did stuff like that. "Do-er" never caught on, "Hobbyist" was to generic, "Hacker" got sideswiped by the media, "Nerd" and "Geek" were epithets, so somebody started calling these folks "Makers" in the sense that they made things. And its wonderfully non-specific so people who "make" fabric are just as much makers and people who "make" technology gizmos.
Over the last 10 years the pendulum has swung back a bit and folks like Limor have helped that effort. That folks would embrace that and push back against those who would protect the status quo of not letting you know how things work, sometimes it requires a noisy and brash "movement."
People are much more motivated when they are told "No you can't know that" it seems.
I was right all along.
(Perhaps if the movement gets big enough, my son won't get bullied and called a freak for tinkering like I did. Sounds like win to me.)
That's true. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way for people to buy your kits and learn from your vast engineering knowledge, so they've all started giving their money to someone else. Whose fault is that?
Talk is cheap. Consider putting your money where your mouth is.
I still want a Wave Bubble.