How It's Made: What it Means

The cable TV program "How It's Made" demonstrates how everyday items are manufactured or produced. The show is an engineering geek's paradise and a marvel for the common stock TV viewer looking for something interesting to watch.

Filmed and narrated at a pace that would make any 6^th grade teacher proud, How It's Made never talks down to its viewers or complicates an issue. Its charm as a program is making the often-amazing processes of manufacturing known to the general public. Whether it focuses on cooking up batches of potato chips or sewing together hockey gloves, How It's Made illuminates the processes necessary to bring goods to market.

Now in its 11^th season, How It's Made is a Discovery Channel production that defies modern television programming the way Seinfeld originally defied sitcom formulas. The difference is this: How It's Made is a show about something while Seinfeld was a show about nothing.

While the focus of How It's Made is on how products are made, it also affords viewers the opportunity to observe workers involved in putting those products together. One of the side benefits is that the show also usually features goods manufactured in the USA. For many people, that "made in America" feel may be one of the unspoken pleasures in watching How It's Made. "Hey! This country still does make a lot of cool stuff." Or at least it looks cool once you see it featured on How It's Made.

The show focuses almost its full attention on the objects being made rather than engaging in commentary on the sometimes repetitive tasks required to get the job done. Some workers are true craftsman while others play a role on the assembly line. There's no judgment on either extreme on How It's Made. Instead, every episode is a lesson in what it takes to do that one thing right. So whether it makes a study of cranking out jelly-filled snack cakes or the manufacture of hypodermic needles, How It's Made assuredly lets you know someone invested serious thinking into making it happen. Obsession might be a better word for what it takes to calibrate and organize the machines and labor necessary to make a common light bulb, for example.

I'm one of those people who have often mused what it would be like to have to re-invent things we take for granted every day. If you were the last person on earth, how would you even begin to channel electricity for yourself, or milk a cow, make rubber, sew clothes? Fly me to the moon? Forget about it!

Modern culture is so dependent on technology now it is impossible to imagine going backward. When Y2K rolled around, we were all temporarily forced to imagine the scenario where our technological infrastructure might collapse. American society's response was interesting. Some people stocked up on essentials while others headed for the hills in case the entire culture devolved and life turned into a riot on the streets. So perhaps a spin-off show called How It Runs would be just as successful as How It's Made. We could learn all about how motors, digital machines and rocket fuel make things run!

How It's Made really does show the deep knowledge base and background necessary to run the world. While some of the products featured are far from essential (those jelly-filled snack cakes, for instance) it is still fascinating to appreciate how many ways the human race has invented to take care of our needs and amuse ourselves. To some degree, the evolution of the human mind has been externalized to an obsession with the objects we use to survive and thrive. How It's Made could just as easily be titled Who We Are. The things we use in our daily lives really do play a big role in determining who we really are. Whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, we busy ourselves making choices about which products to bring into our lives without giving much thought to where or how they're made.

I think back to a scene from another TV show, the Jessica Simpson-Nick Lachey reality program called Newlyweds. The young couple embarks on a shopping trip to Home Depot. While Nick focuses on getting something he needs to complete a project around the house, Jessica wanders absently through the aisles. The lovely Jessica pauses for a moment, examining a store rack filled with mundane items and muses, "Who makes all this stuff. It's all so random!"

From the mouth of babes (or a babe, in this case...) comes eternal wisdom.

So here's some advice for Jessica: You can find the answer to your question on How It's Made.