I agree with your remarks in that I have noticed on ham radio sites some of the hams publicly not being very happy to be told they had gone away and what they s

I agree with your remarks in that I have noticed on ham radio sites some of the hams publicly not being very happy to be told they had gone away and what they spent the 70s, 80s, 90s doing didn't exist. "I'm a ham radio home brewer and I'm not a maker" and stuff like that. I would disagree, or at least extend your remarks in an alternate direction, in that the modern maker movement from the outside looks like kids and art is the new addition to the mix (the rebranding you refer to, at least as I see it). Find an old QST or QEX or other electronics magazine from the 90s and look at proud pix of projects and for the vast majority WRT appearance its at best early leather and steel man cave and at worst if you don't have a technical background it totally looks like junk and its all adult with adult risks and adult tools. Modern maker is all about the art and the kids and you're only going to see bright colors and flowing lines and proportions and whimsy on maker stuff, not old school ham radio / electronic dude stuff. Some machinist hand made steam engines do look beautiful in my opinion but that also drifts into the non-technical public probably thinking it looks like junk. I've been to maker fair, and I've been to too many ham radio fests to count. Just looking at the tables, at the artistic style of stuff and the tools you can tell if you're at a maker fair or a ham fest. I feel less confident about camp and "not real". Maker seems to be a lot of self referential "learn some skills to do something real" "make believe" type of stuff. So you get a laser cut robot that kinda walks and is very whimsical and artsy and kids can safely assemble it, but it doesn't really do anything and its unclear what you'd do with it after its made. The ham culture is more like here's a 1500 watt linear amplifier and yes the power supply is quite easily capable of killing you if you aren't careful in design, construction, operation, and maintenance so kids are totally not allowed and once its done you talk to the other side of the planet using morse code on 20 meters or bounce digital waveforms off the moon on 2 meters, and not being a maker project it will have all the artistic appeal and style of a beige box PC or a filing cabinet, even if it does have technologically cutting edge intermodulation and linearity specs. Or old school non-maker is like a table saw that almost demonically wants to rip your hand off at the wrist but if you're a sober and careful and methodical adult it makes beautiful carpentry projects, but from an art perspective, its an ugly metal table with a spinning blood hungry saw wheel of death in the center, and thats about it, not exactly "maker" in kid-safety or artistic style.