Reading Makers: The new industrial revolution by Chris Anderson is like stepping into the future, except that this future is actually happening now.

This is a world of MakerBots, 3-D printing, open source, start-up factories, maker spaces, crowd funding, Fab Labs, the Internet if things, DIY drones. Confused? Don’t be. I was too when I started working at Nesta just over a year ago. It’s a space we very much occupy and it’s deeply fascinating, even though the terminology seems as futuristic sometimes as the future it’s describing.

This book argues that we are all makers now, but actually that we always have been. The Fordist period of history (named after the mass production of Henry Ford where you could have any colour model T, as long as it was black) from around the Second World War to the 1970s, with its standardised products that discouraged understanding and repair have lulled us into thinking that we are consumers with no need to make things. But anyone who enjoys cooking or writing or creating anything is a maker and always has been, it’s just that new technology is now reintroducing making to the mainstream.

So how can we make sure young people get a chance to become makers themselves? If I think back to CDT (craft, design and technology) classes in the 1980s in my excellent comprehensive school it’s a far cry from the world described in this book. Nesta’s digital makers campaign is all about ensuring young people become makers rather than consumers of technology and can grab this brave new world and make it better.