I love DIY porn. That’s why I work at Instructables: to see how people practice their crafts, reinvent objects around them, and experiment with new ideas. Every so often, I do one myself, but it’s mostly just compulsive clicking on images to see how people make stuff.

A similar thing that gets me off is what I’ll call “Factory Porn.” I love videos of industrial processes, from automated bread-baking to car manufacture. One of my best memories from Vietnam was touring an entire town that devoted itself to pottery making, from dredging silt to make clay to the huge kilns that fired the painted urns and bowls. Enter HowStuffIsMade, a wiki-based site that describes the manufacture of all kinds of things:

What is this?

HowStuffisMade is a visual encyclopedia documenting the manufacturing processes, labor conditions and environmental accounts of contemporary products.

Who made this?

HSIM is a collaboratively produced, independent, academic, wiki-based publication. Encyclopedia entries are summative photo essays created by engineering, design and art students guided by faculty who ensure high standards of evidence (see diagram/scenarios for student participation process). HSIM is accessible to students and faculty, to manufacturers, professional engineers and designers, and to the general public, all of whom may contribute edits and updates to any student entry.

Here, for example, is how jellybeans are made. I think I’m in heaven…

Related Posts:

• It’s the Business (September, 2008)
• Potential Instructable? (September, 2007)
• Web 2.0 Notes: Social Interface Design Patterns (April, 2009)
• Index of Shipping Container Architecture (January, 2008)
• “A Group is its Own Worst Enemy” (November, 2008)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under instructables, just plain cool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.