Squid Labs, and Bicycle/DIY Culture
Bicycling is about more than just wanting to avoid paying the astronomical costs associated with driving a car; bicycling is intrinsically linked to other mass popular movements - like the DIY (Do it yourself) movement.
Forbes ran an article on Saul Griffith (wiki), co-founder of Alameda-based Squid Labs, a company incubator. Their most popular site to date is instructables (logo at right), which teaches regular people how to do various things for themselves. Here’s an instructable on how to request bike racks from your local government.
The Forbes article starts:
Saul Griffith (above) is only 34 years old, but he’s already helped create enough technologies and companies to last a lifetime. A short list includes a cheap way to prescribe and create corrective lenses in the developing world, a wind energy generation system using massive high-altitude kites and a human-powered energy project.
Further down, we get some hints that Saul and his comrades are down with the bicycle:
Amid tables of cord and metal, aviation prototypes contend with elaborate computer models of bicycle lights.
Those bicycle light models probably have something to do with the MonkeyLectric LED bike wheel lights that Squid Labs created:
Reading further, we have an ‘Of course!’ moment:
Bicycles seem to outnumber cars in the parking lot, and the abandoned runways next to the building invite human- and kite-powered racing.
It almost goes without saying that a company with a DIY culture will be big into bikes.
More on Saul from CNNMoney.com. And here is Saul giving a TED Talk.
And don’t forget to check out all of Squid Labs’ companies.
The title of the Forbes article is ‘How to fix the world‘; I sometimes think we already have the answer.
Leave comment (0)[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
