To your point about 3D printing and robots, we haven’t really moved the needle that much. We’ve made it easy for anyone to print a “cool” robot, sure, but it isn’t necessarily a _useful_ one.
As a former “maker” and electronics hack I think lot of maker stuff has devolved into “cool” stuff that consists of wire hangers and servos with RGB lighting and very little actual value. But coolness doesn’t really mean much when everything is hyped as such.
Being a maker isn’t about creating “things of value” or being “useful”.
That same mindset is ruining many a good hobby. Astrophotography is going down a shameful route where the only thing your peers want to see is the misery of all the debt you have to out fancy someone else.
as for 3d printers.. they have come a long way and have become a core part of creativity and engineering for programs like First Robotics.. hardware is improving, safety is improving, reliability is improving - so much so that if you give up on the creative aspect you can just print away and get started with little effort.
For some reason I feel the need to weigh in here. I love photography and astronomy but I see no point in mixing the two. We just spent $10 billion to send a fabulous camera and lens into the L2 Lagrange point. Not to mention the over 30 year old Hubble which no amateur has any hope of matching despite decades of advancements in amateur tech (and to be fair to the amateurs, they can do remarkably better than their peers of 30 years ago). But I already spent my money (in tax dollar form) on the best scientists in the world to go and take pretty pictures which also sometimes provide great scientific input.
If people enjoy astrophotography then that's fine, but the most magical part of Astronomy to me is seeing Saturn (easily the visual crown jewel of our solar system) through the telescope with my own eyes and realizing that it really is hanging out there in the sky for all to see.
Citizen scientists do make discoveries - we often discover NEO's, comets and supernova to assist scientists who have limited capacity - I've seen some great work here and lots of technology + telescope convergence of being able to scan thousands of plate solves a night using GPU to find near earth objects. This part of citizen science is doing well...
but astrophotography, it used to be able the wonder of capturing it - regardless if you prefer visual with your eye or assisted seeing with a camera. There used to be a aura of DIY - find a camera, adapt it, take some photos, share them, have people say good job.
Now its really about memes, trolling and who can get the most Instagram's.. and that's kind of depressing.
The people doing citizen science are way outnumbered by the vocal ones comparing their debt, their investment and their preference of equipment as a superiority complex and social media feeds into that and supports it with the algo favoring the controversy and the fights
It was a bitter sweet day to sell off my remote observatory and get my nights back...
but the passion for the heavens is still there
however, that "eyepiece vs a camera" thing is very much part of the problem with the hobby... it just shouldn't matter.
I think this would be helped a lot if the maker community immersed itself more in industrial engineering.
Like you mentioned, its hard to go from "hah, I can make a cool thing" to "Let me make this super useful mechatronic contraption" but this is the bread and butter of industry.
You see production lines and they're just a long string of such contraptions working in unison.
Makers nowadays have amazing resources that were previously reserved only for industry so heck yeah, maybe go make a fish fillet machine or something just for kicks but also maybe a brand new small business
Huh? I don't follow. 3D Printing and robot are moving far faster than ever before. Sure, you aren't going from "no 3d printing" to "3d printing", but that's like complaining about food today because it isn't like when you were a kid and got McDonalds once a month and how awesome that was!
As a former “maker” and electronics hack I think lot of maker stuff has devolved into “cool” stuff that consists of wire hangers and servos with RGB lighting and very little actual value. But coolness doesn’t really mean much when everything is hyped as such.