Press Release: the Digital DIY vocabulary now also available as e-book

Digital Do It Yourself now has its “vocabulary” of words and concepts
from the European DiDIY project

A vocabulary that collects the main words and concepts about the Digital Do It Yourself (DiDIY) phenomenon is now available to all as an e-book in English, downloadable on the DiDIY web site (http://www.didiy.eu/public/didiy-vocabulary-1.0.pdf).

This vocabulary results from the research activities that a multidisciplinary team of seven European partners are carrying out since 2015. It is intended as a complement of the Knowledge Framework (www.didiy.eu/public/deliverables/didiy-d2.4pdf) on DiDIY, and it’s aimed at providing a common conceptual and lexical ground to the activities performed in the project, collecting words and concepts so that they are easily found and understood by everybody.

The fact that the phenomenon of Digital Do It Yourself is new, complex and dynamic, produces a wide range of options, from narrow to broad, in the interpretation of what DiDIY may be. That makes difficult to achieve that goal and is the reason why the vocabulary contains both definitions of the words and explanatory notes, that expand the information provided by the definitions, and emphasise the multiple interpretations that sometimes are given to the defined concepts.

In this way the DiDIY research team aims to provide the general public with a simple and synthetic tool to help people both in understanding the phenomenon of Digital Do It Yourself and the results of the still ongoing research activity (http://www.didiy.eu/project/results), and in involving them more and more in the project itself.

About the DiDIY Project

Digital Do It Yourself (DiDIY) is a new socio-technological phenomenon, centered around digital devices that support, often through open online communities, the convergence of "atoms" and "bits".

DiDIY-related technologies and social practices enable the low cost prototyping and manufacturing of physical artefacts from digital specifications. They can lead to new scenarios in the roles and relations among individuals, organizations, and society, in which new opportunities and threats emerge accordingly.

The DiDIY Research Project (www.didiy.eu), which addresses the Horizon 2020 call for a "Human-centric Digital Age", is studying how DiDIY and the increasing social adoption of ABC (atoms-bits convergence) devices are:

  • reshaping organization, work, education, research and creative design,

  • impacting on creative society,

  • influencing legal systems,

  • changing ethics.

The DiDIY Project is carried out, through a multidisciplinary team (www.didiy.eu/project/people), by an international Consortium of seven Partners (www.didiy.eu/project/partners):

  • LIUC - Università Cattaneo (IT, www.liuc.it), a university established in 1991 by the Industrial Association of the Province of Varese

  • Communication and Media Research Institute (UK, www.westminster.ac.uk/camri) of the University of Westminster, a world-leading centre for media and communications research

  • Ab.Acus srl (IT, www.ab-acus.eu), a company whose mission is to design and develop technologically advanced products and services

  • Manchester Metropolitan University (UK, www2.mmu.ac.uk), the largest campus-based undergraduate university in the UK, with an emphasis on vocational education and employability

  • Free Knowledge Institute (NL, http://freeknowledge.eu) a hub that, since 2007, has coordinated several international projects in the areas of Free Software, Open Standards, Open Educational Resources, Access to Knowledge

  • Amerikaniko Kollegio Anatolia (GR, www.act.edu), a non-profit educational institution with a comprehensive undergraduate curriculum in Business, Business Computing, International Relations and English

  • Politecnico di Milano (IT, www.polimi.it), a scientific-technological university funded in 1863, which trains engineers, architects and industrial designers

  • The goal of the Project is to produce well-grounded models and guidelines to support both education and policy making on DiDIY, intended as an ongoing phenomenon that, while surely enabled by technology, should be driven and shaped by social and cultural strategies, not technology.

The DiDIY Project, which started at the beginning of 2015 and has a duration of 30 months, is now collecting as much DiDIY-related information as possible, and collaborating with other people, projects and communities interested in Digital DIY, from educators to makers and public administrators.

People can join the public forum (www.didiy.eu/forums/didiy-main-forum), find news and activities related to the project on the official blog (http://www.didiy.eu/blogs), and the results of the research activity on the website (http://www.didiy.eu/project/results). Fact Sheets, videos and media material are available in a dedicated page (http://www.didiy.eu/fact-sheets-videos-blog-press-corner).

For any other information, or to signal events and other resources relevant to the DiDIY project, or to know more about the project itself, please send an email to didiy@didiy.eu or use the form at www.didiy.eu/contact.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644344. The views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the views of the EC.

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