Abstract
This column will try to describe the characteristics of current cyberpsychology research in Europe. In particular, CyberEurope aims at describing the leading research groups and projects running on the other side of the Ocean.
Do-it-yourself (DIY) is a long-standing social and cultural phenomenon characterized by individual activity to create, repair, and modify objects. In this (presumed) industrial revolution, the project aims at setting a conceptual framework to explore the impact of digital DIY (DiDIY). DIY typically occurs outside of companies and without the support of paid professionals. People engage in DIY sometimes with economic justifications, but also driven by personal satisfaction, interest in extreme customization, or social reputation. In a context of industrialization that separated producers and users, DIY is a means for individuals to recover their autonomy by the productive and creative use of their skills and time. Information processing technology is widespread today, embedded in computers, smartphones, 3D printers, home automation systems, and so on, changing the role of DIY and the way DIYers operate.
To designate this emerging socio-technological phenomenon of DIY enabled and reshaped by digital tools, a group of researchers coined the term “digital do-it-yourself” (DiDIY). In this (presumed) industrial revolution, the project aims to set a conceptual framework to explore the impact of DiDIY and to produce information, models, and guidelines to support education and policy making on DiDIY that, while enabled by technology, should be driven by social and cultural strategies. Moreover, the project will study how DiDIY is reshaping organization and work, education, and research; impacting on social and legal systems; and changing creative design and ethics.
The Main Features of DiDIY
DiDIY is a human-centric phenomenon, evolving thanks to the widespread availability of affordable technological tools and the growing number of DiDIYers operating in communities, which further lowers the barriers to new entries and thus makes DiDIY increasingly attractive.
In this dynamic context, the project aimed to develop a body of knowledge to understand the social impact of DiDIY better in order to produce and disseminate information, models, and guidelines to support education and policy making on DiDIY. The idea is that DiDIY has the power to improve our society, but to achieve this goal, it would benefit from the input of a cultural strategy rather than being driven solely by the market and technology.
The subject is acknowledged to be multidimensional and, as such, is studied by analyzing how DiDIY is reshaping organization and work and education and research and by exploring how it is impacting on creative society and legal systems and how it is changing creative design and ethics. The development of a systemic interpretation and relevant guidelines for policy makers was the challenge for the multidisciplinary research team.
The Main Outcomes of the Project
The most important features of DiDIY identified by the project are that DiDIY is both an activity and a mind-set. Hence, with both object- and subject-related components, the distinction between users and producers of artifacts is becoming fuzzy, and new opportunities and threats emerge. DiDIY-related technologies and social practices amplify the creativity and skills of individuals who now can afford to develop digitally self-made objects, and what an individual produces could be the outcome of contributions from a community of developers sharing their ideas in a spirit of open knowledge. Moreover, the project integrated contributions from a range of academic disciplines and showed that:
in organization and work: digital technologies are transforming the concept of DIY by exploiting knowledge sharing within communities into new configurations of Digital Do-It-Together in which functional roles blur—this research could identify ways to achieve better individual and organizational performances by studying the features leveraging on, or conflicting toward, DiDIY within several different organizational domains; in education and research: DiDIY is largely a bottom-up phenomenon, related to the flow of skills and knowledge between stakeholders, the steps of learning processes and the outcomes, and the technology involved in learning processes—this research could indicate ways of improving the uptake of teaching/research tools, as well as raise citizens' expectations about the potential of DiDIY by mapping what is going on in different countries in different environments; in creative society: DiDIY influences, alters, or empowers the dynamics of makers' relationship to digital technologies, and it enables DiDIY communities to meet the challenge of local, social, and environmental problems in a new way—this research could help guide communities toward the creative resources they need for tackling problems, with a consequent impact upon policy making regarding support for DiDIY initiatives; in laws, rights, and responsibilities: current legal systems are challenged by and provide challenges to the emerging culture of DiDIY, as in the case of the “right to repair,” which is needed in order to make production less environmentally damaging—this research could influence the formulation of future policy and legal measures by developing a clear overview of the main challenges and policy recommendations that fit with the new paradigm.
The research has also shown that DiDIY-related phenomena can be effectively modeled and simulated, capturing the activity of making to explore “what if” scenarios on the impact of DiDIY, in order to understand better the effect of: different licensing laws/systems on its growth; sharing and communication structures concerning how makers interact and organize themselves; and how the development of makerspaces/fablabs could facilitate the development of DiDIY.
Sources: Cordis, European Commission and European Union