0:00:00.714,0:00:02.041
Hey guys.

0:00:02.041,0:00:03.811
It's funny, someone just mentioned MacGyver,

0:00:03.811,0:00:05.751
because that was, like, I loved it,

0:00:05.751,0:00:11.071
and when I was seven, I taped a fork to a drill

0:00:11.071,0:00:13.792
and I was like, "Hey, Mom, I'm going to Olive Garden."

0:00:13.792,0:00:17.943
And -- (Drilling noise) (Laughter)

0:00:17.943,0:00:20.875
And it worked really well there.

0:00:20.875,0:00:24.696
And you know, it had a profound effect on me.

0:00:24.696,0:00:26.924
It sounds silly, but I thought, okay,

0:00:26.924,0:00:29.796
the way the world works can be changed,

0:00:29.796,0:00:31.947
and it can be changed by me in these small ways.

0:00:31.947,0:00:33.661
And my relationship to

0:00:33.661,0:00:35.153
especially human-made objects

0:00:35.153,0:00:37.038
which someone else said they work like this,

0:00:37.038,0:00:40.188
well, I can say they work a different way, a little bit.

0:00:40.188,0:00:42.686
And so, about 20 years later,

0:00:42.686,0:00:44.194
I didn't realize the full effect of this,

0:00:44.194,0:00:45.971
but I went to Costa Rica

0:00:45.971,0:00:48.138
and I stayed with these Guaymí natives there,

0:00:48.138,0:00:51.640
and they could pull leaves off of trees and make shingles out of them,

0:00:51.640,0:00:54.809
and they could make beds out of trees,

0:00:54.809,0:00:57.043
and they could -- I watched this woman for three days.

0:00:57.043,0:01:00.290
I was there. She was peeling this palm frond apart,

0:01:00.290,0:01:03.427
these little threads off of it, and she'd roll the threads together

0:01:03.427,0:01:06.145
and make little thicker threads, like strings,

0:01:06.145,0:01:08.966
and she would weave the strings together,

0:01:08.966,0:01:12.446
and as the materiality of this exact very bag

0:01:12.446,0:01:15.334
formed before my eyes over those three days,

0:01:15.334,0:01:18.641
the materiality of the way the world works,

0:01:18.641,0:01:21.115
of reality, kind of started to unravel in my mind,

0:01:21.115,0:01:24.463
because I realized that this bag and these clothes

0:01:24.463,0:01:26.847
and the trampoline you have at home and the pencil sharpener,

0:01:26.847,0:01:30.980
everything you have is made out of either a tree or a rock

0:01:30.980,0:01:33.324
or something we dug out of the ground and did some process to,

0:01:33.324,0:01:37.235
maybe a more complicated one, but still, everything was made that way.

0:01:37.235,0:01:39.427
And so I had to start studying,

0:01:39.427,0:01:41.137
who is it that's making these decisions?

0:01:41.137,0:01:42.946
Who's making these things? How did they make them?

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What stops us from making them?

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Because this is how reality is created.

0:01:47.345,0:01:49.932
So I started right away. I was at MIT Media Lab,

0:01:49.932,0:01:52.481
and I was studying the maker movement

0:01:52.481,0:01:54.031
and makers and creativity.

0:01:54.031,0:01:56.158
And I started in nature, because I saw these Guaymís

0:01:56.158,0:01:59.203
doing it in nature, and there just seems to be less barriers.

0:01:59.203,0:02:02.548
So I went to Vermont to Not Back to School Camp,

0:02:02.548,0:02:05.800
where there's unschoolers who are just kind of hanging out

0:02:05.800,0:02:07.287
and willing to try anything.

0:02:07.287,0:02:09.580
So I said, "Let's go into the woods near this stream

0:02:09.580,0:02:11.609
and just put stuff together, you know, make something,

0:02:11.609,0:02:14.196
I don't care, geometrical shapes, just grab some junk from around you.

0:02:14.196,0:02:15.845
We won't bring anything with us.

0:02:15.845,0:02:18.364
And, like, within minutes, this is very easy for adults

0:02:18.364,0:02:19.452
and teens to do.

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Here's a triangle that was being formed underneath a flowing stream,

0:02:22.587,0:02:25.171
and the shape of an oak leaf being made

0:02:25.171,0:02:28.365
by other small oak leaves being put together.

0:02:28.365,0:02:31.102
A leaf tied to a stick with a blade of grass.

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The materiality and fleshiness and meat of the mushroom

0:02:33.798,0:02:37.170
being explored by how it can hold up different objects being stuck into it.

0:02:37.170,0:02:40.735
And after about 45 minutes, you get really intricate projects

0:02:40.735,0:02:43.962
like leaves sorted by hue, so you get a color fade

0:02:43.962,0:02:45.806
and put in a circle like a wreath.

0:02:45.806,0:02:48.422
And the creator of this, he said,

0:02:48.422,0:02:50.092
"This is fire. I call this fire."

0:02:50.092,0:02:52.319
And someone asked him, "How do you get those sticks

0:02:52.319,0:02:54.080
to stay on that tree?"

0:02:54.080,0:02:57.190
And he's like, "I don't know, but I can show you."

0:02:57.190,0:02:58.822
And I'm like, "Wow, that's really amazing.

0:02:58.822,0:03:00.205
He doesn't know, but he can show you."

0:03:00.205,0:03:02.785
So his hands know and his intuition knows,

0:03:02.785,0:03:05.641
but sometimes what we know gets in the way

0:03:05.641,0:03:07.678
of what could be, especially

0:03:07.678,0:03:10.605
when it comes to the human-made, human-built world.

0:03:10.605,0:03:12.902
We think we already know how something works,

0:03:12.902,0:03:15.045
so we can't imagine how it could work.

0:03:15.045,0:03:16.391
We know how it's supposed to work,

0:03:16.391,0:03:19.798
so we can't suppose all the things that could be possible.

0:03:19.798,0:03:23.645
So kids don't have as hard of a time with this,

0:03:23.645,0:03:26.930
and I saw in my own son, I gave him this book.

0:03:26.930,0:03:29.138
I'm a good hippie dad, so I'm like,

0:03:29.138,0:03:31.315
"Okay, you're going to learn to love the moon.

0:03:31.315,0:03:33.648
I'm going to give you some building blocks

0:03:33.648,0:03:36.798
and they're nonrectilinear cactus building blocks,

0:03:36.798,0:03:38.612
so it's totally legit."

0:03:38.612,0:03:40.886
But he doesn't really know what to do with these.

0:03:40.886,0:03:42.458
I didn't show him.

0:03:42.458,0:03:43.966
And so he's like, "Okay, I'll just mess around with this."

0:03:43.966,0:03:47.869
This is no different than the sticks are to the teens in the forest.

0:03:47.869,0:03:50.341
Just going to try to put them in shapes

0:03:50.341,0:03:52.117
and push on them and stuff.

0:03:52.117,0:03:54.781
And before long, he's kind of got this mechanism

0:03:54.781,0:03:58.451
where you can almost launch and catapult objects around,

0:03:58.451,0:04:00.716
and he enlists us in helping him.

0:04:00.716,0:04:02.651
And at this point, I'm starting to wonder,

0:04:02.651,0:04:05.452
what kind of tools can we give people,

0:04:05.452,0:04:08.406
especially adults, who know too much,

0:04:08.406,0:04:10.697
so that they can see the world as malleable,

0:04:10.697,0:04:12.174
so they see themselves as agents of change

0:04:12.174,0:04:13.636
in their everyday lives.

0:04:13.636,0:04:16.122
Because the most advanced scientists are really

0:04:16.122,0:04:18.854
just kind of pushing the way the world itself works,

0:04:18.854,0:04:20.031
pushing what matter can do,

0:04:20.031,0:04:22.812
the most advanced artists are just pushing the medium,

0:04:22.812,0:04:24.758
and any sufficiently complicated task,

0:04:24.758,0:04:27.683
whether you're a cook or a carpenter or you're raising a child --

0:04:27.683,0:04:29.369
anything that's complicated --

0:04:29.369,0:04:31.896
comes up with problems that aren't solved in the middle of it,

0:04:31.896,0:04:35.222
and you can't do a good job getting it done unless you can say,

0:04:35.222,0:04:37.350
"Okay, well we're just going to have to refigure this.

0:04:37.350,0:04:40.029
I don't care that pencils are supposed to be for writing.

0:04:40.029,0:04:42.214
I'm going to use them a different way."

0:04:42.214,0:04:47.013
So let me show you a little demo.

0:04:47.013,0:04:51.575
This is a little piano circuit right in here,

0:04:51.575,0:04:53.666
and this is an ordinary paintbrush

0:04:53.666,0:04:56.661
that I smashed it together with. (Beeping)

0:04:56.661,0:04:58.524
And so, with some ketchup,

0:04:58.524,0:05:01.998
— (musical notes) —

0:05:01.998,0:05:03.287
and then I can kind of

0:05:03.287,0:05:09.782
— (musical notes) —

0:05:09.782,0:05:11.741
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:05:11.741,0:05:14.464
And that's awesome, right?

0:05:14.464,0:05:15.774
But this is not what's awesome.

0:05:15.774,0:05:17.336
What's awesome is what happens

0:05:17.336,0:05:20.755
when you give the piano circuit to people.

0:05:20.755,0:05:22.138
A pencil is not just a pencil.

0:05:22.138,0:05:23.806
Look what it has in the middle of it.

0:05:23.806,0:05:26.558
That's a wire running down the middle,

0:05:26.558,0:05:27.999
and not only is it a wire,

0:05:27.999,0:05:30.359
if you take that piano circuit, you can thumbtack

0:05:30.359,0:05:32.298
into the middle of a pencil,

0:05:32.298,0:05:35.218
and you can lay out wire on the page, too,

0:05:35.218,0:05:37.639
and get electrical current to run through it.

0:05:37.639,0:05:39.521
And so you can kind of hack a pencil,

0:05:39.521,0:05:45.042
just by thumbtacking into it with a little piano electrical circuit.

0:05:45.042,0:05:46.982
And the electricity runs through your body too.

0:05:46.982,0:05:50.328
And then you can take the little piano circuit off the pencil.

0:05:50.328,0:05:53.782
You can make one of these brushes just on the fly.

0:05:53.782,0:05:55.589
All you do is connect to the bristles,

0:05:55.589,0:05:57.581
and the bristles are wet, so they conduct,

0:05:57.581,0:06:00.150
and the person's body conducts,

0:06:00.150,0:06:02.149
and leather is great to paint on,

0:06:02.149,0:06:04.854
and then you can start hooking to everything,

0:06:04.854,0:06:05.849
even the kitchen sink.

0:06:05.849,0:06:07.768
The metal in the sink is conductive.

0:06:07.768,0:06:11.321
Flowing water acts like a theremin or a violin.

0:06:11.321,0:06:16.303
(Musical notes)

0:06:16.303,0:06:17.557
And you can even hook to the trees.

0:06:17.557,0:06:20.953
Anything in the world is either conductive or not conductive,

0:06:20.953,0:06:22.727
and you can use those together.

0:06:22.727,0:06:24.183
So — (Laughter) —

0:06:24.183,0:06:27.338
I took this to those same teens, because those teens are

0:06:27.338,0:06:29.795
really awesome, and they'll try things that I won't try.

0:06:29.795,0:06:32.778
I don't even have access to a facial piercing if I wanted to.

0:06:32.778,0:06:36.799
And this young woman, she made what she called a hula-looper,

0:06:36.799,0:06:39.212
and as the hula hoop traveled around her body,

0:06:39.212,0:06:41.983
she has a circuit taped to her shirt right there.

0:06:41.983,0:06:44.024
You can see her pointing to it in the picture.

0:06:44.024,0:06:46.440
And every time the hula hoop would smush against her body,

0:06:46.440,0:06:48.623
it would connect two little pieces of copper tape,

0:06:48.623,0:06:50.359
and it would make a sound, and the next sound,

0:06:50.359,0:06:52.895
and it would loop the same sounds over and over again.

0:06:52.895,0:06:54.824
I ran these workshops everywhere.

0:06:54.824,0:06:57.834
In Taiwan, at an art museum, this 12-year-old girl

0:06:57.834,0:07:01.496
made a mushroom organ out of some mushrooms that were from Taiwan

0:07:01.496,0:07:03.280
and some electrical tape and hot glue.

0:07:03.280,0:07:05.361
And professional designers were making artifacts

0:07:05.361,0:07:07.140
with this thing strapped onto it.

0:07:07.140,0:07:09.354
And big companies like Intel

0:07:09.354,0:07:13.007
or smaller design firms like Ideo or startups like Bump,

0:07:13.007,0:07:14.559
were inviting me to give workshops,

0:07:14.559,0:07:16.954
just to practice this idea of smashing electronics

0:07:16.954,0:07:18.786
and everyday objects together.

0:07:18.786,0:07:21.447
And then we came up with this idea

0:07:21.447,0:07:23.235
to not just use electronics,

0:07:23.235,0:07:26.207
but let's just smash computers with everyday objects

0:07:26.207,0:07:28.767
and see how that goes over.

0:07:28.767,0:07:32.366
And so I just want to do a quick demo.

0:07:32.366,0:07:34.991
So this is the MaKey MaKey circuit,

0:07:34.991,0:07:37.890
and I'm just going to set it up from the beginning in front of you.

0:07:37.890,0:07:41.923
So I'll just plug it in, and now it's on by USB.

0:07:41.923,0:07:44.560
And I'll just hook up the forward arrow.

0:07:44.560,0:07:48.001
You guys are facing that way, so I'll hook it to this one.

0:07:48.001,0:07:51.647
And I'll just hook up a little ground wire to it.

0:07:51.647,0:07:54.171
And now, if I touch this piece of pizza,

0:07:54.171,0:07:57.235
the slides that I showed you before should go forward.

0:07:57.235,0:08:00.667
And now if I hook up this wire just by connecting it

0:08:00.667,0:08:03.939
to the left arrow, I'm kind of programming it by where I hook it up,

0:08:03.939,0:08:06.960
now I have a left arrow and a right arrow,

0:08:06.960,0:08:09.160
so I should be able to go forwards and backwards

0:08:09.160,0:08:12.264
and forwards and backwards. Awesome.

0:08:12.264,0:08:14.808
And so we're like, "We gotta put a video out about this."

0:08:14.808,0:08:17.376
Because no one really believed that this was important

0:08:17.376,0:08:20.355
or meaningful except me and, like, one other guy.

0:08:20.355,0:08:22.040
So we made a video to prove that

0:08:22.040,0:08:23.580
there's lots of stuff you can do.

0:08:23.580,0:08:25.612
You can kind of sketch with Play-Doh

0:08:25.612,0:08:29.546
and just Google for game controllers.

0:08:29.546,0:08:32.233
Just ordinary Play-Doh, nothing special.

0:08:32.233,0:08:33.934
And you can literally draw joysticks

0:08:33.934,0:08:41.057
and just find Pacman on your computer and then just hook it up. (Video game noises)

0:08:41.057,0:08:44.560
And you know the little plastic drawers you can get at Target?

0:08:44.560,0:08:46.768
Well, if you take those out, they hold water great,

0:08:46.768,0:08:48.904
but you can totally cut your toes,

0:08:48.904,0:08:51.592
so yeah, just be careful.

0:08:51.592,0:08:54.464
You know the Happiness Project, where the experts

0:08:54.464,0:08:57.222
are setting up the piano stairs, and how cool that is?

0:08:57.222,0:08:58.432
Well, I think it's cool,

0:08:58.432,0:09:00.775
but we should be doing that stuff ourselves.

0:09:00.775,0:09:03.858
It shouldn't be a set of experts engineering the way the world works.

0:09:03.858,0:09:05.833
We should all be participating

0:09:05.833,0:09:07.753
in changing the way the world works together.

0:09:07.753,0:09:09.940
Aluminum foil. Everybody has a cat.

0:09:09.940,0:09:13.124
Get a bowl of water. This is just Photo Booth on your Mac OS.

0:09:13.124,0:09:15.184
Hover the mouse over the "take a photo" button,

0:09:15.184,0:09:16.759
and you've got a little cat photo booth.

0:09:16.759,0:09:19.448
And so we needed hundreds of people to buy this.

0:09:19.448,0:09:22.536
If hundreds of people didn't buy this, we couldn't put it on the market.

0:09:22.536,0:09:25.437
And so we put it up on Kickstarter,

0:09:25.437,0:09:28.432
and hundreds of people bought it in the first day.

0:09:28.432,0:09:29.458
And then 30 days later,

0:09:29.458,0:09:32.725
11,000 people had backed the project.

0:09:32.725,0:09:34.840
And then what the best part is, we started getting

0:09:34.840,0:09:38.912
a flood of videos in of people doing crazy things with it.

0:09:38.912,0:09:41.574
So this is "The Star-Spangled Banner" by eating lunch,

0:09:41.574,0:09:43.648
including drinking Listerine.

0:09:43.648,0:09:45.114
And we actually sent this guy materials.

0:09:45.114,0:09:46.595
We're like, "We're sponsoring you, man.

0:09:46.595,0:09:48.705
You're, like, a pro maker."

0:09:48.705,0:09:52.320
Okay, just wait for this one. This is good.

0:09:52.320,0:09:54.139
(Laughter)

0:09:54.139,0:09:57.624
(Applause)

0:09:57.624,0:09:59.501
And these guys at the exploratorium are

0:09:59.501,0:10:02.466
playing house plants as if they were drums.

0:10:04.723,0:10:08.297
And dads and daughters are completing circuits in special ways.

0:10:08.297,0:10:10.649
And then this brother -- look at this diagram.

0:10:10.649,0:10:11.937
See where it says "sister"?

0:10:11.937,0:10:14.393
I love when people put humans on the diagram.

0:10:14.393,0:10:16.861
I always add humans to any technical --

0:10:16.861,0:10:18.993
if you're drawing a technical diagram, put a human in it.

0:10:18.993,0:10:23.463
And this kid is so sweet. He made this trampoline slideshow advancer for his sister

0:10:23.463,0:10:25.536
so that on her birthday, she could be the star of the show,

0:10:25.536,0:10:28.281
jumping on the trampoline to advance the slides.

0:10:28.281,0:10:31.289
And this guy rounded up his dogs and he made a dog piano.

0:10:34.134,0:10:36.579
And this is fun,

0:10:36.579,0:10:39.466
and what could be more useful than feeling alive and fun?

0:10:39.466,0:10:41.986
But it's also very serious because

0:10:41.986,0:10:44.154
all this accessibility stuff started coming up,

0:10:44.154,0:10:47.110
where people can't use computers, necessarily.

0:10:47.110,0:10:49.802
Like this dad who wrote us, his son has cerebral palsy

0:10:49.802,0:10:51.674
and he can't use a normal keyboard.

0:10:51.674,0:10:55.245
And so his dad couldn't necessarily afford

0:10:55.245,0:10:57.087
to buy all these custom controllers.

0:10:57.087,0:10:58.713
And so, with the MaKey MaKey, he planned to make

0:10:58.713,0:11:01.607
these gloves to allow him to navigate the web.

0:11:01.607,0:11:03.767
And a huge eruption of discussion

0:11:03.767,0:11:06.722
around accessibility came, and we're really excited about that.

0:11:06.722,0:11:08.623
We didn't plan for that at all.

0:11:08.623,0:11:11.431
And then all these professional musicians started using it,

0:11:11.431,0:11:13.559
like at Coachella, just this weekend

0:11:13.559,0:11:16.711
Jurassic 5 was using this onstage,

0:11:16.711,0:11:20.412
and this D.J. is just from Brooklyn, right around here,

0:11:20.412,0:11:22.423
and he put this up last month.

0:11:22.423,0:11:24.527
And I love the carrot on the turntable.

0:11:24.527,0:11:31.355
(Music: Massive Attack — "Teardrop")

0:11:31.355,0:11:34.101
Most people cannot play them that way. (Laughter)

0:11:34.101,0:11:35.523
And when this started to get serious,

0:11:35.523,0:11:38.950
I thought, I'd better put a really serious warning label on the box that this comes in,

0:11:38.950,0:11:40.652
because otherwise people are going to be getting this

0:11:40.652,0:11:42.891
and they're going to be turning into agents of creative change,

0:11:42.891,0:11:44.183
and governments will be crumbling,

0:11:44.183,0:11:46.542
and I wouldn't have told people, so I thought I'd better warn them.

0:11:46.542,0:11:48.871
And I also put this little surprise. When you open the lid

0:11:48.871,0:11:51.731
of the box, it says, "The world is a construction kit."

0:11:51.731,0:11:53.578
And as you start to mess around this way,

0:11:53.578,0:11:56.677
I think that, in some small ways, you do start to see

0:11:56.677,0:11:58.729
the landscape of your everyday life

0:11:58.729,0:12:01.622
a little bit more like something you could express yourself with,

0:12:01.622,0:12:03.861
and a little bit more like you could participate

0:12:03.861,0:12:06.325
in designing the future of the way the world works.

0:12:06.325,0:12:10.113
And so next time you're on an escalator

0:12:10.113,0:12:11.789
and you drop an M&M by accident,

0:12:11.789,0:12:14.949
you know, maybe that's an M&M surfboard, not an escalator,

0:12:14.949,0:12:16.156
so don't pick it up right away.

0:12:16.156,0:12:18.344
Maybe take some more stuff out of your pockets

0:12:18.344,0:12:21.653
and throw it down, and maybe some chapstick, whatever.

0:12:21.653,0:12:26.615
I used to want to design a utopian society

0:12:26.615,0:12:28.987
or a perfect world or something like that.

0:12:28.987,0:12:30.441
But as I'm kind of getting older

0:12:30.441,0:12:32.017
and kind of messing with all this stuff,

0:12:32.017,0:12:34.785
I'm realizing that my idea of a perfect world

0:12:34.785,0:12:36.801
really can't be designed by one person

0:12:36.801,0:12:38.357
or even by a million experts.

0:12:38.357,0:12:41.525
It's really going to be seven billion pairs of hands,

0:12:41.525,0:12:43.933
each following their own passions,

0:12:43.933,0:12:46.121
and each kind of like a mosaic coming up

0:12:46.121,0:12:47.622
and creating this world in their backyards

0:12:47.622,0:12:49.130
and in their kitchens.

0:12:49.130,0:12:51.696
And that's the world I really want to live in.

0:12:51.696,0:12:53.080
Thank you.

0:12:53.080,0:12:58.611
(Applause)