DIY 2.0 | The art to turn an object into our object

DIY. What does this word mean?

Well, it’s nothing more than the acronym of the English words Do It Yourself, a phenomenon that is now widely spread all over the world.
There are uncountable web sites that talk about this matter and every day new ones emerge. These sites and blogs offer hundreds of pages of articles on how to recycle any kind of material and create the most disparate things, simply describing what is the do-it-yourself of the modern era, the era of the internet, to which everyone has access, from the kid with his first smartphone to his beloved grandmother who is a fan of bricolage.
This practice, apart from being highly appreciated because it allows you to save money, also makes our self-esteem grow vertiginously, allowing us to exclaim at the end of a project: I did it!
In a society where everything is now homologated and mass-made, we know, according to recent surveys, that one in two people, regardless of sex, has fun personalizing or creating consumer goods that are now considered too “standard” for their personal tastes.



Why DIY is so fashionable?

On the web you really can find everything from “how to fit a tap” to “how can I build a toy for my dog”.
But the Internet is not the only place where you can discover the secrets of DIY: there are so many different manuals written on this matter ranging from areas such as cosmetics, jewelery making or needlework to the more challenging ones for example, woodworking to makefurniture for a new house. Some believe these practices are successful practices, because they are extremely healthy in a society in which the digital advances without obstacles, subtracting more and more space from the qualities that no robot can ever have: creativity, patience and fantasy. To all of this we should add that the desire to personalize the items we use every day to distinguish ourselves from the mass affirming our personality in this sea of social networks and connections, bonds perfectly with the need to save money, avoiding the purchase of things we do not need.

But is technology always bad?

With the development of technology, many things are changing uncontrollably, but there is good news.
With the advent of the social network and online channels like YouTube, today you can access countless video tutorials from people around the world, explaining in detail any kind of technique from how to repair your computer on your own to getting a garden bench using an old shipping pallet.
Another wonderful example of this positive innovation is the digitized and shared production, which furniture companies like PlayWood (and not only) are adopting.
PlayWood for example, is based on an open source sharing of projects and designs of their furniture, enabling people to make them locally, using the materials they prefer, respecting the environment, and eliminating the cost of transport they would end up on the finished product .
A real revolution in the production of consumer goods on a large scale that is going to drastically (and fortunately) redirect our approach to the objects we use every day, bearing in mind that nothing is created or destroyed but everything is transformed.