Homeless to hacker: How the Maker Movement changed one man’s life

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/16/homeless-to-hacker-how-the-maker-movement-changed-one-mans-life/

by chinmoy • 13 years ago

7 3 13 years ago

Jun8• 13 years ago

Fantastic piece! This should be required reading in all high school (or earlier) together with pg's essay "How to Make Wealth" (http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html):

Kids know, without knowing they know, that they can create wealth. If you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you make one. But kids are so bad at making things that they consider home-made presents to be a distinct, inferior, sort of thing to store-bought ones-- a mere expression of the proverbial thought that counts. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a resale market.

As he points out, most everyone loses this innate understanding of creating wealth, making stuff, as they grow older. This guy has rediscovered it.

Oc course, this would have been impossible without the enabler of shared space, so we should have more of these.

santu11• 13 years ago

You are totally right on this. The world needs more wealth.

The problems of poverty or homelessness can be solved by acess to products at lower prices. We need more makers and hackers who can do that.

As we grow older, we like to conform to the societal ideals of whatever if safe and suppress our tendency to creative seek out solutions to problems by creating.

Blinkky• 13 years ago

This is a very feel good type article. A couple of things have glaring red flags for me:

"His ideas are in various stages of development and include a food delivery service, a laser company, and a hardware accelerator program."

This tells me that he has all of these "ideas" but no actual expertise in any of these areas. How often have you heard some "bro" say they have a great idea in some field which they don't know anything about.

"Whatever he does next, Roth intends to hire from within the homeless community, which he views as a hotbed of untapped talent."

I'm sure there are some very smart homeless people out there, but you need skills in relevant technologies to be a successful worker in the type of companies hes wants to start. Food delivery might be easy for the homeless to pick up, Optoelectronics on the other hand not so much.

Good on the guy for learning some valuable skills, turning his life around and helping the homeless. Lets just try and be a little bit realistic about whats going on here though.

Homeless to hacker: How the Maker Movement changed one man’s life

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