Editorial Observer/LAWRENCE DOWNES

The word is out that technology makes us stupid. I am in no position to argue, having recently spent a week blundering around Southern California in a rented S.U.V., surrendering my brain to a sultryvoiced G.P.S. unit. “When possible,” she kept telling me, “make a legal U-turn.”
Mental atrophy is all around us. It’s a big theme of “Wall-E,” that fierce indictment of the human race disguised as a family cartoon.
Its human characters are supersized and infantilized by all-encompassing robotic care.
If our machines are coddling us into idiocy, the right reaction is to bristle. An insurgency has been brewing for a few years now, made up of the inventive, the curious and the technologically restless. It’s called the Maker movement, and it has brought the pre-1970s world of basement workshops and amateur tinkering into the digital age.
Through two magazines - Make and Craft - an array of blogs and events called Maker Faires, participants share ideas for previously unimagined tools, toys and forms of locomotion. Their goal is to reassert creative control over technology that is now so sophisticated and magically opaque that we are its loving hostages.
Lots of people are content to lie back and let the iPhone and Google tell them where and who they are. Makers are not those people.
But is the Maker world more than just one big hobbyists’ convention?
Mister Jalopy, a prophet of the movement, thinks so. He lives in Los Angeles, where he runs a store that sells antiques, hardware, purified water and rebuilt bicycles. He writes for Make and blogs about innovation and technology and the cool things he finds at garage sales. Among his creations are “the world’s biggest iPod,” the little Apple slab melded into a hulking push-button stereo console, and a tricycle- mounted video projector for outdoor movies on the go.
Mister Jalopy’s latest mission is taking the Maker mentality to manufacturers, urging them to make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose or even reinvent.
Mister Jalopy (real first name Peter, last name jettisoned from public use) drafted “The Maker’s Bill of Rights,” which frames his views concisely. “Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included,” it declares. “Batteries shall be replaceable. Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.”
Lately, he has refined his thinking into a presentation arguing that manufacturers of hackable products profit from engaging the Maker mind-set. Instead of churning out disposables, they end up making collector’s items, and legendary brands. They turn customers into fierce advocates.
“I really want companies to start thinking about shared innovation,” he said, “to realize that they’re not selling to customers, but to collaborators.”
Mr. Jalopy said he was neither a Luddite nor particularly handy. But he has a deep affection for products that are designed and built to last. “I’m not into retro,” he said. “I’m into better.”