“I am not a maker. In a framing and value system is about creating artifacts, specifically ones you can sell, I am a less valuable human.”
Debbie Chachra, “Why I Am Not a Maker,” The Atlantic, January 23, 2015.
This quote comes from Why I Am Not a Maker, an article about how the tech industry highly values people who create or invent, and greatly undervalues those who manage, teach, or care for others. More specifically, the makers attributed to physical artifacts or pieces of technology are often men, while the less celebrated jobs are delegated to women. What mainly caught my attention is the fact that makers are so disproportionately valued because I’ve found myself thinking the same way and being frustrated because of it.
Reading this made me pay more attention to my own “maker” bias, and thinking back, it’s something that I’ve noticed a lot in my day-to-day life. I feel like I’ve always considered “makers” to be above those that don’t make anything, and the most prominent example I can think of is in music. In high school, I played in a rock band with some of my friends. I also participated in musical theater and sang in our school’s chamber choir. Yet despite how often I’d perform and how long I’ve been doing it, it was difficult for me to really consider myself a musician because I didn’t write my own music. While my band had original songs, most of which were well-liked at our school, I wasn’t the mastermind behind any of them, and this would upset me. I thought less of myself because I didn’t fall into that elite group of “makers,” even though I contributed to and performed in multiple musical groups.
My point in saying all this is that it’s not just me. Non-makers are often less acknowledged by society at large, even though there are plenty of ways to contribute that don’t involve making. This quote (and this article as a whole) made me think about how I value people, their professions and hobbies, and myself.
Ironically, the part of Digital Arts & Humanities that I’m most looking forward to exploring is the making. How are 3d models used to create accurate archives of historical artifacts, people, or even entire places?
