There’s a renewed DIY/independence/hacker vibe going around, Dave Slusher says it needs a name. I agree.

From my perspective, this vibe is about all of us making effective use of cheap tools – to serve our own individual/custom purposes first, and offering the finished product to others to extend and enhance. I hesitate to use the phrase “finished product” – for the end result is not a static, defined product – it’s another tool.

I’ve done enough home renovation to know building materials and tools are not expensive and the renovation is not extraordinarily difficult. It simply takes time to do.

There’s a tinge of Populism in here, but without the belief that the common person is being oppressed by the elite. It’s not socialism or communism – for despite the people owning the means of production we are acting as individuals, not a collective.

My library has far too many Ayn Rand books on it not to consider Objectivism. But it’s not, because everyone expressing the vibe in question places value in being starchy rational and subjective and emotional.

All this digging around makes me wonder if the formative philosophies of our time were defined around striving to get something – rather than what to do once you have it.

Back to the problem at hand….

In the television cartoons of my youth, the “good guys” always seemed to be more unified, more of a collective, more in unison than the disorganized albeit nefarious “bad guys” (the phrase “Herding Cats” comes to mind). Considering how we’re all working in parallel (not unison) on this and in honor of the Dave for throwing down the gauntlet, I suggest the moniker “Evil Genius“.

And since those of the cyberpunk/diy/hacker vein are not without their backup, I also offer: “MacGyver“. ReadyMade Magazine has a regular MacGyver Challenge.

On third thought, perhaps “Dennis” from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, he inspired the title of this post.