Our lives are completely controlled by our ability to access things that we do not know how to make. In a premodern world, most people (read: peasants) were originally surrounded by things that either they made themselves or someone in their vicinity knew how to make: clothes, tools, pottery, etc. Now, everything comes from either a store or a warehouse and for the most part we do not have any idea of the processes or the technology behind the making of the stuff our lives depend on.
This has real consequences: in the US, we have largely forgotten how to make stuff and we rely on other countries to supply many of the core technologies. And advancements in our understanding of how to create and manufacture new materials can solve (and arguably they are already solving) some of our most pressing challenges, such as how to transition to renewable, sustainable sources of energy. Solar is here not so much because there have been radical changes in technology, but because we have become (in fact, China has) really good at the processes required to go from essentially sand to a fully functional solar panel.
My goal with atompicker is to highlight scientific, technological, and cultural aspects related to what we call materials synthesis and in particular thin film growth. So stay tuned.