Opinion | A New Magazine's Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty! (Published 2005)

The people who put out Make magazine are well aware that you could use the information in it to break the law, void your warranty, violate a user agreement, fry a circuit, blow a fuse or poke an eye out.

"Technology, the laws, and limitations imposed by manufacturers and content owners are constantly changing," an editor's note warns. "Thus, some of the projects described may not work, may be inconsistent with current laws or user agreements or may damage or adversely affect some equipment. Your safety is your own responsibility, including proper use of equipment and safety gear, and determining whether you have adequate skill and experience."

How scary. And how refreshing. Make, a new quarterly put out by O'Reilly Media, a publisher of computer and technology books in Sebastopol, Calif., is a throwback to an earlier time, before personal computers, to the prehistory of geekiness -- the age of how-to manuals for clever boys, from the 1920's to the 50's. Its compact, booklike format, in fact, directly mimics a 1959 copy of Popular Science, according to its publisher, Dale Dougherty.

The technology has changed, but not the creative impulse. Make's first issue, out in February, explained how to take aerial photographs with a kite, a disposable camera and a rig of Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and Silly Putty. It also showed how to build a video-camera stabilizer -- a Steadicam, basically -- with $14 worth of steel pipes, bolts and washers; how to boost a laptop computer's Wi-Fi signal with foil from an Indian take-out restaurant; and how to read credit card magnetic stripes with a device made with mail-order parts and a glue gun.

The current issue challenges readers to invent a water purifier with a hypothetical set of supplies including a bicycle with flat tires, bamboo tubes, steel wool, $10 in coins and an endless supply of coconuts.

Make is not just a clubhouse for guys with Skittle breath and abbreviated social skills. Beneath all the home-brewed gadgets and cool software tricks lies a sly and subversive agenda. Make, its makers will tell you, is part of a grass-roots rebellion against consumer technology that they say stifles ingenuity by discouraging end-user modification. To these restless minds, increasingly sophisticated consumer products have forced users into a kind of stupefied passivity, with nothing to do but replace batteries and update software, to point and click into a zone of blissed-out consumption. Marketers and programmers anticipate our every need with products that are essentially disposable, since there is no way to fix or adapt them when they break or become obsolete. In this world, to tinker -- to open the case, to fiddle with wires and see what happens -- is to rebel.