A DIY LED-lit cube / paper lantern:  a translucent and flexible thin-film electronic circuit hooks up a battery to an LED, limber enough to be folded into an origami box. [link evil mad scientist]

There is a definite revival of DIY in our culture. It’s interesting a question as to how this all started. My belief is that it parallels the last revivial of DIY spirit in the 1970s. At that time as well as today people felt disconnected, isolated, and desperate. People struggle to be heard especially in relationship to war and a repressive government. Art making of any kind is therapuetic and it restores our sense of empowerment. The DIY movement has been sparked by several different, maybe complimentary reasons:

• the need for individuals to have an outlet.
• the need to form community.
• the need to access ones independence as a reflection of the ill equipped nature of the state.
• the need to invest in the self.
• the need for revolution.
• the need for economic independence.

The nature of the DIY movement is thus to satisfy the retaliatory nature that arises when one feels repressed, isolated, and lacking the independence that every individual has a right to.

[comment on this discussion at the forum]