
An Alternative to the American Way of Innovation [video] - brudgers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39fhrGjr4U
======
Animats
Remember the "maker movement"? "Maker Spaces?" That was supposed to help
restart hardware prototyping in the US. It didn't.

The original TechShop in Silicon Valley was kind of like that. People were
making rocket components for the X-Prize. But over time, it turned into a
factory for Etsy junk. The concept of "hand made" items made on a CNC laser
cutter was a bit much, but it kept about eight laser cutters busy at the San
Francisco TechShop. Then Etsy dropped the requirement that you had to make it
yourself, and allowed outsourcing. The successor to the bankrupt TechShop has
most of the same laser cutters, but they're mostly idle or broken.

People made Burning Man stuff, repaired bicycles, and made furniture. OK
hobbies, but not going to change the world or even create a manufacturable
product.

I don't know of a single maker space in Silicon Valley with decent electronics
prototyping tools. Ardunio hacking, yes. Surface mount soldering and pick and
place, no. The commercial maker space in San Jose and San Franciso has cast-
off CRT oscilloscopes. About half the right stuff is there, half-broken and
gathering dust. I'm waiting to see if the new nonprofits starting up can get
their act together and actually open.

What's left of "maker spaces" has turned into "STEM" programs that parents
push their kids through so they can improve their resume for college.

~~~
speedplane
I generally agree with your sentiment, but I can think of at least one
counter-example: Tile, which is definitely a new, U.S. based hardware company.
I know the founders and used to work with them at a previous company. We had
access to tons of embedded equipment and everyone who worked there had a
little maker studio at home (one made robotic espresso machines, another did
something similar to Google earth but with hourly weather government imagery,
another made specialized text-to-speech software for playwrights).

Maker spaces may not have become a thing, but that's okay as long as the
makers are still out there. In the U.S. at least, the true maker space is
still in your basement or garage.

~~~
Animats
That doesn't scale. Watch some videos of Huaqiangbei.

~~~
speedplane
>> In the U.S. at least, the true maker space is still in your basement or
garage.

> That doesn't scale.

It most definitely can scale. If there is a strong national or regional social
norm that encourages tinkering in your current garage, basement, or dorm room,
it can reach a far broader scale than forcing folks to make things in pre-
defined maker spaces that require memberships and monthly fees.

Maker spaces have benefits, like increased connectivity and collaboration as
well as efficiently dividing the cost of larger pieces of equipment. However,
they also introduce costs, like monthly fees, forced social connections, and
engendering group-think. It can be far more beneficial for a group of
students/colleagues/friends to meet in their parent's basement or garage than
to each sign up for a maker space.

------
doctorpangloss
It's great to see someone advocating for alternative points of view with
respect to IP.

It's a moot point though. Artisanal hardware is an intellectual dead end. Cost
and IP and economics and whatever are a bunch of red herrings.

Hardware standardization is pretty much _always_ superior to fragmentation.
I've never heard a hardware engineer advocate for fragmentation! Bunnie Huang
should be advocating for the artisanal manufacture of software.

Then again, it really begs the question, why don't we use any _software_ that
comes out of east Asia? Or let's say you buy into sales and profit and
economics and mom-and-pop artisanal crafts and whatever as being in and of
themselves valuable. It's not happening in Shenzhen with respect to software.

The answer is not as simple as localization. Bunnie is having a particularly
reductive IP conversation, where there's no law and it's just whatever
unwritten cultural norms you personally favor rule the land and can be
enforced violently. The IP conversation must be bigger than that, because we
live in a world where all the major tech companies, not just Chinese ones, are
copying each other's features. And yet, nobody's calling that a lawless
Shenzhen world. It's not really about copying or original inventions or any of
what he's talking about!

So lemme ask you this: would you rather subscribe to an IP policy in the
service of an idiosyncratic electronics hardware community? Or would you
rather subscribe to whatever IP theory lets you write good software?

I'd choose the later. That theory is "Whatever the license says," and the
diversity of licenses and their social impact speaks for themselves. For that
to work, you have to respect the rule of law. Which isn't saying much!

More importantly, lawyers are innovative too. That legal work around OSS
licenses has had a much bigger, much more positive impact on the quality of
software than a fuck-the-IP-law attitude going on in Shenzhen.

~~~
sgeisler
> But artisanal hardware is an intellectual dead end.

I agree that this model of iterative improvement won't yield the next big
technological breakthrough. But the big consumer electronics manufacturers
aren't really innovating either. They might make a product a little bit
flatter or give it another camera, but I can't think of a real game changer in
the last five years.

Once all the technology is there and just improves iteratively the described
model seems to be better suited to find as many local optima in the possible
product space as possible (and not just a few big ones).

I could see how a lack of patents would lead to more secrecy in R&D labs. If
what you are doing is truly novel and complicated (like developing a smaller
node type in processor manufacturing) keeping the research secret would keep
you as safe from competitors as patents. And if you aren't (like inventing
rounded corners on smartphones) then you shouldn't have gotten the patent in
the first place imho.

~~~
archgoon
Well; the entire modern smartphone (post iPhone) industry is only a decade
old. Expecting another revolution on par with the first in 5 years seems a
pretty high bar to cross.

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sgeisler
This model is definitely better at serving niche markets.

For example there are phone manufacturers in China that don't follow the silly
trend of making phones slimmer, more fragile and with smaller batteries.
Another example are mini notebooks like the GPD Pocket and its many clones
which you can (could? haven't looked in a while) only get from china.

I'm a happy user of both product categories and don't think any western
company could have been convinced to build these. The market is just too
small.

Since I find myself in these small markets quite often (I love robust/rugged
devices, phones with hardware keyboards, open hardware, ...) that's a super
useful development for me. And I think there are more people like me, maybe
with different wishes, but in similarly small markets, that would profit from
more product diversity and easier customization of products.

~~~
alanbernstein
First I've heard of that Pocket, it kinda reminds me of this
[https://habr.com/en/post/437912/](https://habr.com/en/post/437912/).

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johnmarcus
this only works in an ecosystem where the 'race to the bottom' is futile,
because you are already at the bottom. Hence why it works in China, no one is
going to take your idea and produce it cheaper because everyone is already
functioning in the most efficient manufacturing space possible.

In the western world, this is unfortunately not the case. Getting something
produced is very expensive because our labor, machine, and real estate costs.
Outsourcing makes it cheaper, once you have that pipeline in place. So if I
innovate here without protection but pay the expensive price to have produced
here, there is a significant advantage for person #2 with the China factory
pipeline in place to steal my invention and significantly undercut my costs.

I do like his idea and wish our 'prototype' maker economy was more efficient
in the US, but China has paid a high environmental toll to be in that place
and it is a price we are not willing to pay here in the U.S.

~~~
repsilat
Software works like this. Language package management and open-source libs are
a really close analogue to these little factories and markets full of parts.
(I also think we do it with practical knowledge when people change jobs, and I
think the short tenures in SV are an undersold competitive advantage.)

For things like UI patterns and non-trademarkable design decisions, I think
letting good ideas spread quickly is great for the pace of innovation. Good
ideas of those kinds more quickly become table-stakes, and the scales tilt
further towards "can execute" and "can consistently innovate" over "had a
great idea".

~~~
Haga
Maybe a western maker space should have a co-maker space in the east,
constantly connected by a always on vidchat wall. Stop stalking the past.

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sanketmehta
30-40% Westerners/world uses electronic devices from east. Not because they
are good, but because there is no alternative to Chinese products. They could
easily pay 20-30% more for its west alternative IF AT ALL its available. I
think apple and other alikes should hit this opportunity and start making
replica (as they say improved version) of mi/oppo/hauwei products. Without
compromising on security and quality which is easy thing to achieve. And
powerfull apple/google ecosystem would always be plus. Now innovation could
only come out of mess, by getting hands dirty.

Thats what Steve might have imagined....apple tooth brush, apple car, apple
air/water coolers, apple shoes may be. Making phone bigger and edge to edge
won't help. Every product, every domain needs to be explored. Current "WRITERS
BLOCKS" of new fresh idea could only be crossed by just going with flow and
just make better version of every chinese stuff...Who knows what product might
strike the market.

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xt00
One way to think about the current state of hardware design is that we are
super reliant upon chip vendors. But in this case the parts are poorly
documented or require lots of manual work to get the most out of them, or the
documentation is only given to some people, and the interplay between these
parts and other parts is unclear. So many people who are ignored by the
mainstream companies want that same information and once they get it will
share with others. Simultaneously the people who get good support from the
companies still work very hard to get their idea working. So they are not
motivated to give that away. Is there a huge amount of innovation happening?
Sometimes, sometimes not.

So I would say having a culture within the HW community that helps support
people who want to use chips that are inaccessible to most people because
documentation and support is hard for a small company then that is great.

But advocating that somebody who figures out how to make a novel device that
uses a complex set of parts that dramatically changes the paradigm and takes
years to develop is then immediately copied then we need to protect that. 20
years for a patent? Maybe that’s too long for some areas.. maybe 5 years but
then enforce patents more strongly for obvious copy cats?

~~~
bsder
> But in this case the parts are poorly documented or require lots of manual
> work to get the most out of them, or the documentation is only given to some
> people, and the interplay between these parts and other parts is unclear.

Then I would tell you to quit doing business with such companies. There are
lots of companies that are quite happy to give you information (I would cite
TI, for example).

If you don't like these kinds of policies, then, for example, do your work on
a Beaglebone (TI, with almost everything documented) instead of an RPi
(Broadcom, good luck with that).

Now, I will say that sometimes documentation is just terrible. But, sadly,
even big customers can't always avoid that.

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jl2718
Pretty sure that’s the guy that scaled a small building to show me the MIT
apartment he wanted me to rent with him about 15 years ago. Deja-vu moment.
Cool guy; couldn’t find a third.

Do most of these ‘factory’ startups make a profit? How do they get investment?
It seems like this is only possible in an export-driven economy.

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1ta
Patents punishes everyone who is not first. Why would anyone innovate when the
rewards are 2 lotto away: 1. innovation itself, 2. be 1st among 7B ?

Patents might have been fine in local economy of 25M 100 years ago but they
are definitely are not in global economy of 7B today.

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WhuzzupDomal
I certainly agree with what he is saying; but I believe the American way lends
itself to developing better premium products.

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m0zg
None of the products shown _would even exist_ without American innovation.

