Since leaving the cube farm of corporate America and going solo, I’ve found myself ever more increasingly concerned with social issues. Not that I wasn’t previously concerned, I just find myself soaking up more information via the net, mixing the worthwhile bits in with my past experiences, and attempting to integrate the results into my life. Maybe this is a mid-life crises thing. I’m unsure.

This is all to say that I’ve been trading emails with Dr. Bowyer regarding the RepRap project – but (and you guessed it) not in regards to technical issues. As stated previously my real concern was the potential to treat this open source effort as something appropriate only for academia or for those with research experience; to set technical goals but effectively ignore (or at the very least downplay) usability issues. Let’s make something that works, make it freely available to everyone via the internet, but not really concern ourselves with mundane issues like whether people injure themselves attempting to use/misuse the “product”.

I won’t go into details of our discussion but I’m at least impressed that Dr. Bowyer is engaging me in this conversation – there are many I’m sure who would not. This is definitely more encouraging than some product development efforts in which I’ve participated (none of which, I should add, approach either Graco’s shameful behavior or some of the recent automotive recalls).

Maybe I just need a haircut.