Is making the new knowing? Tangible and intangible knowledge artifacts in DiDIY

Digital Do-It-Yourself (“DiDIY” for short) stands at the intersection of maker and hacker cultures, nourished in their turn by the DIY (Do-it-yourself) practices. In this paper, we briefly introduce these historical phenomena, which flow in the stream of subculture to the present days. We outline DiDIY as a complex mingling, involving social, cultural, technological, economic and psychological dimensions. A new alphabet of knowledge, the “Atoms-Bits Convergence” (ABC) is then introduced to emphasize that what is happening with the diffusion of the new technologies of digital fabrication may reshape our work and society. Finally, we survey the research literature and the Web to systematically assess more than fifty information systems for knowledge sharing in the DiDIY world. This path unveils how a central element of this phenomenon is the concept of Knowledge Artifact (KA), in that DiDIY increasingly entails the availability and familiarity with networked digital information infrastructures, and the interest or need of DiDIYers to use, share, and evolve the knowledge within their communities towards these socio-technical systems. As makers and DiDIY projects simply are not given but within a knowledge community, we argue that these KAs may have impact on shaping new KAs, improving knowledge circulation and innovating social and organizational practices.