Connected Code by Yasmin B. Kafai & Burke

Author:Yasmin B. Kafai & Burke [Kafai, Yasmin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-262-02775-5
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2014-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

6

From Screens to Tangibles

In spring 2012, the grassroots crowd-funding website Kickstarter listed a new request for funding. Two MIT students, Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, were looking for funding for a computational construction kit called MaKey MaKey. The opening text teased potential backers by asking “Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or piano on bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to your world and start inventing the future.” By clipping one alligator clip to the MaKey MaKey board and another one to a conductive object (such as an apple, a banana, or aluminum foil), the user closes a circuit. When users touch the selected object, they manipulate programmed behavior on the Scratch screen. As the “invention kit for the 21st century,” MaKey MaKey invites users to rediscover the computational potential of ordinary objects in everyday life by transforming them into touchpads and combining them with the Internet. As an invention kit, MaKey MaKey is simple enough for beginners and yet complex enough for professional artists and engineers to use in their own respective trades. Jay and Eric’s request for startup funding was accompanied by a video clip that illustrated various MaKey MaKey projects. Within a few days, the campaign reached its initial goal of the $25,000 that was required to kickstart the project, but the money and the feedback did not stop. Hundreds of questions and ideas of what MaKey MaKey could do and what one could make with it filled the comment pages long before anyone received a kit. People asked whether it allowed Bluetooth connectivity, whether one could connect two MaKey MaKeys to a keyboard, and whether applications could ease movement and open access for children with disabilities and senior citizens. By the end of the campaign, over eleven thousand backers had signed up for a package and provided $586,106 in startup funding. It was one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of the year and attracted nearly twenty-four times the amount of funding that its inventors initially requested.1

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