Stupid ideas generally come in clusters, and we at Living Note are no exception :-)
That's basically it, really. DIY is fun and it's empowering to learn stuff, especially if that involves making something real and not only looking at things on the chalkboard. Intelligence gets a different kind of training when subjected to the solving of physical, real problems and the rewards are great for skilled engineers because you don't miss out on the excitement of this amazing thing coming alive on your table and doing this mind-blowing stuff.
And you screw up a LOT and discover that often you're actually getting screwed by a bunch of stuff you weren't even aware of and have to go back and learn. All while making sure everybody around you doesn't go insane. Or you. Which you eventually do anyway. And so does everybody else. Thankfully. The good news is, no matter what dreams or nightmares may come, the resistor will still measure 1.217Ω tomorrow, maybe with a slight drift, and this gets really fun when you start actually understanding how things work.
I can't say enough how exciting it is to have the internet. It used to be you had to have the right books and magazines and hopefully someone around you could ask - and sorting out problems wasn't simple, and more often than not, those with expertise just didn't have the time to help you on your little project. Thankfully, nowadays, you can basically get yourself absolutely inundated with top industry professionals explaining C3 and R5.
We have literally gone, in 20 years, from university knowledge being reserved for the few who could afford it, and had the qualifications, to your neighborhood pothead being able to log on to edX and get a qualification in rocket science from MIT. Literally.
Perhaps not a formal one, but the knowledge is there for anyone who wants to piece it together. This provides entirely new perspectives for how humanity can operate in the future, and the most exciting one is that small businesses can exist from out of anyone's garage, or attic, or both, and you can train and apply yourself to whatever you wanted to be doing like never before. Japan has experienced a recent return of the youth to its traditional forges for making knives, and a lot of people in general are picking up on the idea that well-made, hand made stuff is absolutely cool.
All work here is distributed under the CC4.0 Noncommercial ShareAlike Attribution license - with rights held by all respective originators of whatever works or parts thereof are contained. Note that this is not directed at the personal builder who just wants to build stuff in his off time and sell what he makes, which is completely fine as long as you send pictures of your work and provide the right attribution.
