So last year I got here and I was getting ready to get on another giant animal to ride over to the stage and Sherry [Huss, the creator of Maker Faire] said, "You know, everyone is eager to hear your Sunday sermon." I said, "Sunday sermon? What's that?" She said, "That's what we call your Sunday talk."

No one had told me so I decided this year to write something more akin to a sermon, a secular one to be sure, but oh, my brothers and sisters, sisters and brothers, welcome to Maker Faire. It is lovely to see your shining and beautiful faces, to see the inspiration that is here.

Where are we, and where are we going? Where we are is amazing. Driverless cars might mean the end of a million vehicle-related deaths per year. With technology and science we have improved the overall health and wellness of humans to the point that it is better now than it has ever been in history. We can produce calories cheaper than imaginable 50 years ago, and luxuries like washing machines, cars, and televisions are part of nearly every single household. Where the internet makes so much connectivity possible that the Barbie-collecting banker in Japan can become best friends with the larping poet in Spokane.

Things are pretty cool.

Seeing what other mad geniuses, makers, tinkerers, modders, plodders, planners, organizers, teachers, parents, and inventors are doing invests our work with more purpose.

This is also a terrible time. Where our open internet is under threat. Where automation will eliminate millions of jobs in the next decade. Where the disparity between the richest and the poorest of us increases every single day. Where the color of one's skin can radically alter the outcome of trivial interactions. Things as simple and quotidian as driving down the street or flying in an airplane are fraught with uncertainty at best and lethal danger at worst. Where interconnectivity still yields cliques and exclusive groups leading teens on social media to feel more alone and more marginalized. Where science, the crucible of human progress, has become attached to partisan politics, the engine of exclusion and marginalization. Where our planet is being irrevocably changed for the worse by our bad habits. As William Gibson famously said, "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." Both of these things are true.

At the same exact time, things are as they have always been. They are both great and terrible. But where are we now? Now temporally we are at the Maker Faire Mothership in San Mateo, where we are celebrating the fact that it has never been a better time to be a maker. What unbelievable tools we have at our disposal. We have 3D printers, vinyl cutters, scanners, laser engravers and every hand tool imaginable, and we are here because you mad scientists, makers, tinkerers, modders, plodders, planners, organizing teachers, parents, and inventors find that being around each other is inspiring. And seeing what other mad geniuses, makers, tinkerers, modders, plodders, planners, organizers, teachers, parents, and inventors are doing invests our work with more purpose and gives us ideas to go back home. It's invigorating and it's heart warming.

We may not be able to see the pathway to the solution that can lead to an overall fulfilled healthy, safe, and well-educated populace, but we can take each step that seems like the right one that's in front of us.

We are here to be part of a solution. We may not be able to see the pathway to the solution that can lead to an overall fulfilled healthy, safe, and well-educated populace, but we can take each step that seems like the right one that's in front of us and we can get together and share enthusiasm. That is a great first step to take. We come from so many different backgrounds and circumstances and families and yet we are all here together. The industrial revolution turned us into a cargo cult and gave us consumerism for better or worse, but we are here as a vanguard of a new way of thinking about consumerism. The devices that we are currently calling rapid prototyping machines will soon become so good they will be rapid manufacturing machines. The current product release model that requires expensive advanced tooling and fulfillment chains to be developed at massive human and financial cost is about to give way to countless versions of the on-demand model where iterative invention can take weeks instead of months, hours instead of days. The economy of scale wherein Apple has to make millions of iPhones to enjoy the cost saving that makes one affordable to a person -- that economy of scale is about to collapse.

I think that's a good thing. It means that I can buy my next computer case from a kid down the street and enjoy their hard work and innovation as well as have a personal connection to them. I am all for that. William Gibson has in one of his books that looks just a little bit into the future a community in the southwest called the Sand Benders. He posits this future where we no longer buy new laptops, we just buy bigger hard drives and slightly bigger screens and we put them into a pre-existing case. So this group in the southwest is taking recycled materials and silver and turquoise and making laptop cases that are highly personalized to each buyer, and they're called the Sand Benders. I love the Sand Bender future. We're opening up maker spaces every single day in libraries, schools, hospitals, rec centers, boys and girls clubs, community centers, all over the country and all over the world, and we are here working hard to equalize and democratize the access to those spaces, working hard to share best practices, curricula, fundraising tips, and even tools and techniques with each other. And with these maker spaces we are training a generation of makers, inventors, and digital natives to manipulate their world, hopefully for the better.

There may be a James Bond villain in here somewhere. Right now that position's taken by Elon Musk, and if he's our generation's Bond villain we're not doing so bad. Elon spoke at TED this year and he said a quote I love. He said why is he doing all the crazy stuff that he's doing? Because he just wants to be able to think about the future and not be sad. I can't think of a better sentiment, no matter what side you fall on in any of these debates.

So why make? Why do we make? There are as many reasons as there are hearts and minds but here are some of the more significant ones. We make because in a world of suffering we like having the illusion of control over an empty bench or a blank page or a silent room. That is how we build energy to help those around us. We make because humans have always worked out their problems in a microcosm and while we share child rearing traits with orcas and social hierarchies with gray wolves, we are the only ones making marks on paper about it. We make because we're storytellers, using the narrative form to understand our universe, our surroundings, and each other's stories are how we truly communicate and make sense of our experience.

We make because iterative failure is as important a technique as iterative success, and let's talk about failure. I know that I did this last year but it's worth repeating. By the age of 13 a young girl has already been inculcated with the cultural idea of perfection such that she'd rather say she didn't complete her coding assignment than show five pages of bad code. People who don't admit to failure and resist confronting their own shortcoming will eventually be the inhibitors of progress. They are the opposite of agents of change. They're anti reagents. We need to talk about helping kids to understand failure but we need to talk first about what we mean by failure and what benefits it must yield.

When we say failure we truly mean failure with the same f. Failure with a capital F is like I got drunk and missed my own surprise party or my son's bah mitzvah. I tried to make that a joke but it's so horrifying nobody ever laughs. When we're talking about failure, we mean with a small f and what we mean is things not going according to plan. Nothing ever goes according to plan.

Nothing ever goes according to plan!

If Buddha had to choose a fifth truth underneath his tree I'm convinced it would be that nothing ever goes according to plan.

And that's the plan: that whenever you set out to make something from nothing -- a song , a poem, a table -- you start with a plan and then things go awry. If Buddha had to choose a fifth truth underneath his tree I'm convinced it would be that nothing ever goes according to plan. That's why we do it. Because confronting ourselves and our own biases in the microcosm of the blank sheet of paper, the empty room, or the pristine bench is how we practice and succeed at better taking, knowing ourselves and our loved ones. It's how we come to know and love ourselves. Just as the flight attendant says you have to put on your own oxygen mask before putting the oxygen mask on your child, this is how we practice.

So my fellow makers, mad geniuses, tinkerers, modders, plotters, planners, organizers, teachers, parents, and inventors, let us help the moral arc of the universe bend toward justice. Let us go forward and spread the word that we can use our skills for good, for the betterment of our lives, our communities, and our planet. This isn't partisan. Let's move forward with these things in mind; acceptance, inclusion, sustainability, democratized access, creativity, support, forgiveness, safety, and love.

As the late amazing statistician Hans Rosling said, "I have a suggestion for a new term for the developing world. Let's just call it the world." Let's here at Maker Faire work together at making a better one.

That's my Sunday sermon. Thank you.