Creative
Human
Intelligence.com
Dedicated to making makerspaces
Make Stuff
m1welcome
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WELCOME
We believe that the ability to do creative work is a fundamental human need. Our goal is to create a self funding institution that brings together people to turn imagination into physical reality.
We're not looking for government grants or financing from billionaires. We believe this is a gift that we can give to ourselves.
Subvert the algorithm
A significant part of our economy is based on monopolizing people's attention. If you can make people watch you, you make money. Society took an ugly turn when the algorithms noticed that people like content that makes them angry. Instead of making real things, people have learned to make a living by making people hate their neighbors.
But what if a large group of creative people decided to focus their attention on something that is objectively good? Something that improves mental health, creates wealth and builds strong communities? What if it turns out America is not as broken as we have been told? What if you somehow met your neighbors and despite what you've heard on FaceBook, they are not cannibal, pedophile, communist, nazi, shape shifting lizard people? What if we meet our enemies and they are us?
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We want to build a network of community makerspaces that allow people to use a wide variety of creative tools in much the same way you go to a gym, except here instead of building your body, you're building things.
Our makerspaces will have multiple revenue streams. Users will pay to use equipment. Whether you know it or not, creative construction is a joyful process. Makers will build unique products from food to cars, to furniture, and the makerspace will promote and sell these products. The proceeds from these sales will be divided between the makers and the makerspace. Teachers will teach the correct use of tools, or their classes will have no tools other than the human body. The makerspaces will always have empty space for dance, yoga, martial arts or anything else. What will be taught will be determined by what teachers want to teach and the demand for their classes. Your local makerspace might teach you how to play musical instruments or it could teach you how to make musical instruments.
But as we grow social media has the potential to become a major source of funding. We will continually create media devoted to creativity. We want to empower a new generation of filmmakers who will learn their trade by telling stories about the creative process. If you have $600,000 and want to study filmmaking you should buy yourself a BA from USC. You'll have a great time extending your adolescence. If you want to learn to be a filmmaker, you should make films. We'll have great cameras and editing equipment and also an endless supply of stories that need to be told. When you're ready to start telling your own stories you'll also have access to an amazing prop department. Instead of carrying student debt you could have money in the bank.
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What if we could use social media to give people something better to do with their time than waste it on social media?
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Who wants it most?
Tell us who you are
There are two standard ways of financing a start up. First, you find investors and go through a process of extracting value from the idea, converting it to cash and funneling it into the pockets of shareholders.
Second, you organize as a nonprofit beg for grant money and never have enough resources to realize your stated goals.
We want to try a third way. Once a makerspace is open it should be able to fund itself through its ongoing activities. The problem is getting funds to open the space. While we intend to organize as a nonprofit we don't want to pursue corporate donations. We want limited donations from private individuals. You can join our group for a donation of one dollar. We are looking for ten million members. In addition to a nominal donation we want the benefit of their intelligence and experience to help design the structure of our makerspaces on a national level, and to imbue each regional makerspace with distinct local character.
We believe in the existence of a vast number of people who are invisible to the media because of their unwillingness to put on stupid clothes and make ridiculous statements about things they don't understand. Clowns get clicks.
We believe there are millions of rational people who are quietly waiting for a path back to a normal world. We want to be one of those paths.
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If we were handed ten million dollars to open two makerspaces we would briefly appear on the national radar, thousands of people would attend early on, and hundreds would be saddened when our doors close because of a lack of general interest.
If we challenge people to participate by organizing the Users, Makers and Teachers in their local communities and choosing the tools they want to use, we know this concept will succeed. Doing regular productive, creative work is addictive.
Thousands of decisions need to be made; for example: carpentry and fabric arts will both be represented in every community. People like to sew and they like to saw. If we're buying tools what we need to know is how many people want to build custom furniture and many want to sell couture wedding gowns.
When we hit 10 million members we want to be ready to open two makerspaces. The cities that receive this honor will have created the best online models of the makerspaces they want to build in the real world. This will cover prospective locations, a base of committed users and skilled makers, available physical resources and local charm. We especially want to hear from thousands of people who will promise to leave their deeply held personal beliefs in the car and work with people they don't know both for personal gain and the benefit of the group.
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These are the makerspaces that will be used to capacity, building products, making money and paying bills on opening day.
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For some people a makerspace is an art center, a place to make a mess using professional quality tools and give form to create beauty and have fun. To others it is a working factory where you can build really cool stuff and make a little extra money, and for others it will be a space where you can reinvent yourself as a person and start a completely new career.
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We don't want government funding, but we would take the right real estate. We can make this work through the participation of ordinary people who recognize an opportunity to improve their own lives. We are organizing as a non profit but our goal is to make a lot of money. Instead of channeling it to a few people at the top of a pyramid, we create the opportunity for productive people to engage in commerce while funding the institution that makes it possible. We are apolitical and our only social goal is to bring people together to make money and have fun.
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Here in Arizona we already have hundreds of people who want to open a place to build, the problem is finding space. All across the country there are millions of square feet of commercial real estate sitting empty because it's smarter to take a loss and get a tax break than to lower the rent to what people can pay. That's why we're organizing as a nonprofit. We are a tax break, but no one is going to open their doors to us until we show we are serious people and we have a plan.
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This will take years, but the result of the work will last for lifetimes. We believe humanity has the inalienable right to be creative, but we have to give it to ourselves.
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So what is a makerspace and how does it work? Most obviously a makerspace is a place to build things. What kind of things will depend on your community. Each space will be designed by and reflect the interests of its makers. Activities can include but are not limited to woodworking, blacksmithing, forging, lapidary, textile arts, fashion design, cooking and cuisine, laser cutting, aquaculture, video production, c and c machining, 3D printing. Depending on who wants to teach, your space could make music, or musical instruments.
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The power of creativity
As a species we have lost our connection to physical reality. To take a lump of physical matter and transform it through imagination and skill is an act of power. Learn to control some aspect of physical reality and it puts you on the path to taking control of your own life. A makerspace is a place where you can stop being a passive consumer and build the world that you want to live in. Yes, you can create personal wealth, we’re all about capitalism, but we ask you to pay a price. You will have to get along with the people working next to you. After the anger and isolation that came from COVID we need to relearn courtesy and mutual respect. Your community makerspace is going to have thousands of people coming into it every month and you have to treat them the way you would like to be treated. We want to build apolitical spaces where all are welcome. People say America is broken, that we can’t work together. We the people of Creative Human Intelligence say that’s a lie and we will prove it.
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Beyond physical tools we want to provide empty space, places where the body and mind can also be developed. A good hardwood dancefloor and a bunch of mats opens the door for everything from yoga to martial arts. Do we expect you to do it for free? Oh no, this is a place of commerce. You should value your own skills and expect to be compensated for your work. Our goal is to give you a place to find students and develop as a teacher, where you rent space by the hour instead of signing a 3 year lease in a strip mall. A key part of this concept is we plan to produce a lot of video. If you would like to develop yourself as a brand we want to help you showcase your talents and build a client base. Fair warning, some of you will get famous.
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Finance
This brings us to the subject of how we expect to pay for all of this. On level one, there will be user fees. You don’t have to be looking to change your life to use the space. Using your hands creatively is a joyful process and it makes you smarter when you do it. If your idea of a good time is to throw a pot, cut a gemstone, forge a blade, we’re here for you with equipment and teachers at an hourly rate. If money is an obstacle then remember, we’re forming a nonprofit. You can earn user hours by volunteering time, and at the makerspace volunteering will be an education in itself.
Level two is for established makers who want to dream bigger. Do you need extra hands? More square feet than you have in your garage? Seed money for raw materials? Do you want to represent yourself as a maker, but you’re frustrated by setting up a camera, while manipulating tools and materials? Work under our roof. We want to establish the makerspace as a brand in itself. You will retain your identity as a maker but when you work within our structure we reinforce each other’s brands. We showcase your skills while your work shows the world that we have spaces where people can build great things. We will cooperate with you to create video that reflects your personality while showing your building process, and then market the result as the effort of our combined brands. The proceeds of the sale are then divided between the artist, his crew, the videographer and the makerspace according to an agreement negotiated in advance.
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This leads us to our third level of financing which won’t help much in our early days but will ultimately help us establish makerspaces anywhere we find people who want to learn, build and teach. In our modern economy if you can create digital media that attracts the attention of a wide audience, you have created capital. This frequently benefits people who are angry, ill informed, greedy, violent, horny or just celebrating the collapse of civilization…but what if we used that power to do something good?
If people choose to support this project our first purchases will be professional cameras and computers powerful enough to efficiently edit video and run high end graphics programs. Our first hires will be freelance videographers. Before we open our first space, we will be producing videos talking about every aspect of the creative process and how it creates real benefit in people’s lives. This means everything from talking about art therapy as a means of healing wounded warriors to hanging out with artists who have gained financial independence by developing and marketing their skills. Hard to believe, but some of the best and most profitable artists working today left professional careers because they weren't happy.
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get involved
If you would like to be part of this project it will cost you one dollar to join. If 10 million people decide to join this movement, their $10 million dollar contribution will go a long way to financing our first two makerspaces, but 10 million subscribers regularly viewing our digital content will finance the next.
The first two will be a struggle but three is a magic number. At that point we can start factoring in the force of civic pride and setting up competitions between makerspaces in different cities. A tipping point will be reached: instead of negotiating with manufacturers as we buy equipment, the manufacturers will recognize that their best advertising is putting equipment in our shops. Instead of scrounging for grants from the charitable arms of local corporations, big business will be offering space in exchange for naming rights.
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build community
There is an empty space in the world that could be filled by an institution devoted to creativity. We don’t need government funding. We need ordinary people to act in their own self interest in spite of the fact that this will benefit other people, even people they have come to believe they are obliged to hate.
In the maker’s world you continually need to learn new skills if you are going to grow as a maker. It doesn’t matter if you just want a quiet place to paint a picture or you want access to a 3D printer to create a next gen wind turbine, the learning process never stops and there’s a limit to what you can teach yourself. We can’t stop you from being rude, but you will learn that there are direct consequences to acting like a jerk: if you want to keep learning, learn to be nice. The vast majority of people hold similar values and should be able to get along. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the actual number of cannibal pedophile shape shifting lizard people has been vastly overrepresented in the media, or at least on the internet.
build the future
In today’s world you can make at least a marginal living by spreading hate; all you need is a smart phone. You don't even need content. You ca jus comment on someone else's content, or comment on someone else commenting on someone else's content. Find an uglier way to say something that should have never been said and you're on your way to being the next YouTube millionaire.
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On the other hand, if you have an idea for a real world product you're going to need thousands of dollars just to build a prototype and that's assuming you have the skill to use the tools you don't have access to.
We want to create a career path devoted to using a wide variety of tools in order to make marketable products, either physical or digital.
People would be well advised to expand their range of skills right now. Have you noticed that whenever there is a press release for an advance in robotics or autonomous driving, big tech still manages to imply that this advance will create a more prosperous world for everyone? How do they do that without laughing? Maybe the narration is generated with artificial intelligence. The working man still gets the last laugh: now AI is able to write code.
organize
We are in the reality verification stage of this project. Do ten thousand people like this idea enough to bet one dollar that the better angels of our nature still exist? Can we work together to build something that builds a better world for all of us?
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We intend to build membership very slowly at the beginning. This is a time for people to discuss the concept. We can't help ourselves, makers are obsessive about planning, but if you're excited by the idea here are some things to move the project forward:
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First off, talk about it on Social Media. Spread the word.
If you're a maker think about where you would fit in. Would you just like to show up and make a mess while building your current obsession? Would you like to teach? Would you like to design your dream shop and make it scalable so it can grow? Would you like to join the team that manages your dream shop?
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You don't need to be friendly with power tools to create this space. We're going to face a wide variety of challenges. We're going to need input from insurance underwriters, HR specialists, social workers, real estate professionals and even a few lawyers would be good. We will build these spaces in the virtual world before we start leasing property. Our life experience makes us smarter than artificial intelligence. Collective intelligence put a man on the moon. The singular vision of an overrated mind gave us the Cybertruck.
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Become a member of the board
When we hit 10,000 members we will incorporate as a non profit organization. At this point we will need to name the membership of our board of directors. You will be the first members of our group to officially contribute time and energy to making this dream a reality. This will require regular Zoom meetings as well as your thoughtful participation.
We're looking for diversity. We want representatives of all parts of America, ethnically, geographically and professionally. The one qualification that every candidate must share is that you have to want this project to succeed. Our mindset is that there will continually be obstacles and we have to plan for them in order to move past them. At the start you should expect this to be a donation of your time, but we hope this will change as we become successful.
create content
After we incorporate as an NP our next financial goal is to hire videographers to make films about our project, the creative process and creative people. Video one will be a Kickstarter and from there we'll see how we grow.
Until that time we'd love it if our members would create content of their own and send it in. Be creative and make it real. Show your creative process and try to focus on how you would grow with more space, more equipment and the support of a group. For a lot of us, the creative process keeps us sane. Don't be afraid to talk about that. Think it over carefully and show the world what you're capable of. We will post selected videos on our YouTube channel and just possibly you'll go viral and it will help to build our brand. If money actually starts accumulating we'll split that with the maker. I hope that becomes a headache we'll have to deal with.
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Beyond that we love film and we want to partner with you as you grow as an artist. If you're a Hollywood nepo baby and your family has money to burn, get a degree in film from a school like USC. You'll have a great time. But if you're an outsider looking to break in, the best way to learn to be a filmmaker is to make film. At the makerspace there will be endless stories to tell. Show up, meet people, learn who they are and figure out their story and the story of their product, then make them a little bit famous. Proceeds will be divided between filmmaker, subjects and the makerspace. When you're ready to start producing the movies you want to make, you'll have access to cameras, a whole bunch of interesting looking potential actors and if you make friends along the way, you'll have the best prop and costume department this side of Hollywood.
Subvert the algorithm
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