Italian archeologists discovered an ancient Greek building that came with Ikea-like assemble instructions. Scientist believe that a local builder started designing these affordable ready-to-assemble DIY homes in response to the local craze for all things Greek.

Joseph Moxon publishes his book "Mechanick Exercises". This 2 volume series featured information on DIY metal working, bricklaying, sundial construction, printing, and typefounding.

The term "do it yourself" is coined in 1912 by Garrett Winslow in Suburban Life Magazine. This coincides with the publication of instructional magazines such as Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated which provided information on tools, techniques, and resources relevant to American farmers.

Time magazine declares that "do it yourself is the new billion-dollar hobby" in North America. Due to an increase in wealth, leisure time, and homeownership, DIY home improvement explodes in Britain and North America. For the first time, power tools are made and sold to the general public.

DIY meets counterculture with the publishing of Whole Earth Catalogue, a guide that promotes sustainable and holistic living to those living in communes and non-traditional lifestyles.

In response to mass consumerism, the punk counterculture embraces DIY ethics to produce music, events, merchandise, and zines outside of mainstream channels.

With home computers and access the internet on the rise, people now had access to DIY information online. In 1998, the seeds of the maker movement were planted by Neil Gershenfeld, a professor at MIT, who started the "How to make (almost) anything" course. This class led to the creation of the fablab concept which took fabrication from the industrial scale to the small scale.

Dale Dougherty, a prominent leader in the maker movement, launches Maker magazine in 2005 and Maker Faire in 2006.

With the advent of Web 2.0, content creator websites like YouTube, along with blogs, and social media resulted in an explosion in DIY learning. Now people could not only learn but can also easily create their own DIY instructions to share with the world.

Salman Khan's KhanAcademy begins to take hold of the education community. His concepts of an openly available set of video tutorials with mastery-learning assessments for understanding make math accessible for free to any student with an internet connection.

MIT partners with Harvard in 2012 to turn their MITx open-learning platform into edX; offering high-quality courses for free online. They also publish nearly all of their course materials online for anyone to access.

Today the DIY learning space is infinite. With mobile technology, you can now learn anything, at any time, for free or at a low cost.

DIY learning continues to be influenced by advancements in technologies, mainstream and countercultures, and the economic strains and gains of everyday people.