Users re-invent technology when they test features, tweak devices and applications to better fit their needs (Papa and Papa, 1992), invent new ways to use services, and develop novel social, economic, and political practices around technology’s possibilities (Venkatesh etal., 2012). As new practices develop, we need to better understand the dynamics of interaction between social, economic, and political influences

The public has become aware of the popularization of hacking and making mostly through moments of emergency and scandal. Forgetting serves a function for the public, allowing them to get on with their own interests. Concurrently, this public forgetting allows hackers to regain their spaces of creativity and action. Maker culture, too, forgets in order to find a perpetual sense of novelty in their very existence. Forgetting, an important social and cultural project, is also part of the democratic project. Democracies forget to put aside old tensions and re-form in order for the public to sup-port them.