Given our cultural separations – “artists” in one place – “engineers” another – many of us – I’m guilty of this frequently – we forget how intertwined, and sometimes indistinguishable they are. Rather than make the general argument, check out Daniel Bauen, a young Atlanta-based maker and designer of things. You can look at his resume – and some brilliant pieces of work. If anyone thinks they can draw bright lines between the art and the engineering, we might have an interesting discussion. What’s beyond question is that he’s doing marvelous work. Beautiful, practical – and some so fun that I’m tempted to say that he’s a toymaker – who, in order to make what he makes – became an engineerand an artist in the process.

A motorized moving shade system for buildings – that is, roof-mounted solar panels move automatically in order to maximize shade and solar collection: (pictured left); A solar rock spinner – solar-powered when none one feels like pushing it around;

Bauen also – as a student – participated in the design of two bood-drawing devices one for pediatric and one for diabetics, designed to alleviate, if not  eliminate the pain of blood drawing.

There’s more at Daniel Bauen’a personal site and even more at his other site-  Engineerable.

Engineerable is  a dedicated to Bauen’s published work on the amazing site Instructables, which was one of inspirations for PopularLogistics –  because it’s premises include the democratization of technology, and how communities can share knowledge build on that knowledge, and  in the process, among other things, promise recycling and reuse, and fabricate green technologies which the marketplace has yet to deliver at a reasonable price.

Do check out  Daniel Bauen’s collection of “Instructables.” And the larger Instructables community. One of the things we’ve wanted to cover more are risk-reduction and disaster-response devices and technologies. In a book and proposal we’re working on at the moment – one of the central premises is that effective disaster preparedness will come from communities, and one of the networks or communities with the biggest role to play are – we don’t know what to call them – but the community of which. Instructables is an exemplar – that among us we have the skillsets to change things for the better – and the ability to improve and share them among themselves.

It’s primarily because we’re a bit ahort-staffed that we haven’t done more in this vein, but it’s part of what we’re certain will evolve into a critical cultural movement to change out national habits about technology in ways that wlll reduce the risk of disasters, mitigate the harm of disasters, and speed rebuilding and recovery.

So hats off, then, to Mr. Bauen and Instructables. And we’d also like to point out that in our household, and our neighborhood, which has, roughly .75 dogs per person, would regard a man who made a bicycle powered tennis-ball thrower with near-religous awe, as our dogs regard tennis balls as objects of great desire.