ATLAS SPEAKER Leah Buechley

Early this month I attended the Atlas series speaker Leah Buechley’s High-Low Tech presentation. In the presentation Leah discussed the organization High-Low Tech’s goals and the strategies they use to encourage kids to become interested in technology and believe that they have the ability to not only use but also create the technologies of the future. They believe that in today’s world that people take for granted the technologies we have because they come easy to us and that we don’t actually understand and know how they actually function. The organization puts on programs where they encourage people to design artifacts and experiences. The four aspects that High-Low Tech focuses on in these workshops are artifacts, audience, and intent and make it your own. By artifacts they mean that they are trying to explore traditions of human making. From this they try to mix these traditions with contemporary techniques. Through creating objects that represent good craftsmanship, objects made from smart materials all while preserving the beauty of the object at hand. They stress that the beauty of the object is just as important as the utility of the object. Meaning that the object should look as good as it functions as it makes the technology that more successful. The target audience they are trying to reach is another goal of High-Low Tech. They try to reach out to people who don’t have experience building technology and they believe that by educating these people that they will help drive the evolution of technologies we use throughout our lives. This point makes a lot of sense to me, as I believe that the more people that understand how technologies function, will help us progress as a society. For one thing for certain is that it could not hurt having more technologically educated people in the world. The intent of trying to educate people who don’t know how technology works is to get them excited about technology in general. By getting them excited in technology from an early age they believe that more people than not will pursue careers in technology in the future. Meaning that by exciting these people about technology that they will form interests in the development technology. High-Low Tech tries to create excitement in these people by use, control and create. They do this through the system, which they call Make it Your Own. Specifically targeted towards kids, they host public funded programs where they use open source hardware, paper sculpture, and drawing to create electrical circuits that work right in front of their eyes. Looking back on my education I wish I were introduced more to things like the kids in these programs have received. I feel as if I would be better off and more prepared for the future if I was exposed to a technological education throughout my entire education. I believe that what High-Low Tech is doing is great and I have taken interest in wondering the fallout from what they are doing. Being an organization that has formed not too long ago it will be a while until we know if they influenced kids interests in becoming interested in technology. However I believe that by introducing more kids to technology and how it is created, that it will produce more people who can innovate our lives in the future and I only see positives from what they are doing.