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Take back the lab</h1><h2 style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font: normal normal bold 17px/normal arial; font-size: 16px; ">
Inventors’ club teaches technological self-reliance</h2><h3 style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font: normal normal bold 15px/normal arial; font-size: 11px; ">
HOUSTON CHRONICLE</h3><h4 style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal arial; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">
March 26, 2010, 8:31PM</h4><p></p><p id="id2447882" class="Outlook-Edittextlarge DropCap5" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; ">
It's 10 p.m. on Friday in the Museum District. In a workshop jammed with computer guts and old circuit boards, a motley crowd of college students, IT experts, NASA engineers and one young boy gather around a homemade gizmo spitting out tiny, 3-D buildings made of plastic. The spectators are all members of TX/RX Labs, a year-old nonprofit that teaches ordinary people to fix — and build — their own technology. This shambling, easygoing tinkerers' club is a model of how Houston should be cultivating its large bank of untapped intellectual capital.</p>
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Tech collectives like TX/RX got their start about a decade ago, spreading from Europe to New York, Washington, D.C., and California. Computer programmers first gathered to teach new skills and collaborate on software projects for the sheer fun of it. The groups' do-it-yourself ethic caught on outside the computer world, leading to collective workspaces that attracted tech enthusiasts of all types.</p>
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Inspired by this movement, 32-year-old Houstonian James Kern — a University of Houston math and psychology graduate who works in information technology — cofounded TX/RX.</p><p id="id2447938" class="Outlook-Edittextlarge" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; ">
Within months, he had attracted about 75 members, some with little in common but a taste for technology — and the conviction that they had a right to know more about it. For a monthly fee of $80 ($50 for students) members get almost round-the-clock access to a well-equipped if ramshackle lab, complete with electronic parts, a drill press and computer network components.</p>
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But for most members, the prize resource can be found once a month on Friday nights, when they gather to talk tech, pose questions, and put their heads together on often-ambitious projects.</p><p id="id2447959" class="Outlook-Edittextlarge" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; ">
This past winter, for example, they spent a few hundred dollars on an old printer from Goodwill and a mail-order computer kit — and built the sophisticated 3-D printer churning out those highly detailed miniature plastic buildings. These printers, normally in the $40,000 range, are usually affordable only for specialists such as architects. The TX/RX crew plans to engineer theirs to produce its own plastic components — essentially, to replicate itself — so that individuals can build them at home.</p>
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It's a great example of the club's overall mission: teaching Houstonians to be self-reliant in handling the technology on which we all depend. Though almost everyone uses cars, computers and cellphones, Kern said, few Americans have a clue how to fix them. TX/RX wants to show us how. But TX/RX also teaches many lower-tech skills — as in its 2009 lock-picking seminar, or the upcoming soldering class in which members will learn to fix their own eyeglasses.</p>
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The club itself is open to everyone, career gearheads or not, however: the intellectual and creative fellowship, Kern said, is as important as technology expertise. Among the regulars, Kern said, is a 14-year-old boy, accompanied by his father, who painstakingly is building a suit of chain mail.</p>
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In many ways, TX/RX is a sign of the times. Whenever the economy sputters, Americans tend to get interested in do-it-yourself, making do and repurposing. TX/RX, which also prioritizes leaving a smaller environmental footprint, neatly responds to that trend. The collective also belongs to a pre-recession backlash against several decades of technology so specialized — so opaque — that ordinary Americans can no longer take apart a car or telephone and learn how it works. There's a yearning to reclaim the once-familiar feeling of competence that the new tech collectives fulfill.</p>
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But TX/RX also continues a much older, and historically influential, tradition: the work of the amateur scientist. Richard Holmes, the British author of <span class="Outlook-Edittextlarge Italic" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><em class="Outlook-Edittextlarge Italic" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The Age of Wonder</em></span>, tells us this tradition dates to the 18th century, which saw the rise of independent scientists — thinkers who would include Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin — who worked from their homes, followed their curiosity and often built their own instruments.</p>
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Two hundred years later, the word “amateur” usually carries a pejorative tone. It shouldn't.</p><p id="id2448088" class="Outlook-Edittextlarge" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; ">
In Houston, home to tens of thousands of talented engineers, scientists and technicians, TX/RX offers a reminder of the potential of the trained mind — inside and outside of the traditional workplace. Even in a recession, unpaid should never be mistaken for unproductive.</p>
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