NOMCON 2022

A study titled “The Lifecycle of Inventors” characterized the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in the United States, using de-identified data on 1.2 million inventors. They show that children from high-income (top 1%) families are ten times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families. The findings of this study suggest that there are many “lost Einsteins” - individuals who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation in childhood - especially among women, minorities, and children from low-income families (Bell, A., et. al., 2018). The maker movement has been criticized for maintaining a “white male nerd dominance” that has characterized hacker, tinkerer, and robotics cultures. In a 2013 keynote address at Stanford’s FabLearn Conference on digital fabrication in education, Leah Buechley described the MAKE organization as being focused on a narrow range of maker activities (primarily robotics, electronics, and vehicles) and an even narrower range of makers, with 85 percent of its magazine covers featuring white boys and men. By digitizing the tools of making, Be A Maker Club aims to make them accessible for potential makers who currently do not have access to those tools.