I'm reminded of this line: "More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary" [0].
A year and a half ago I finally made my way back to hands-on hardware development after a few years in data science. It's very satisfying to have a job where there's some physical labor involved and I recognize how lucky I am to be in such a job in a tech company.
"More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary"
I personally find that line deeply disturbing. It is utterly backwards. It starts with the tail's wagging driving the dog and only gets more wrong from there as a view of the world. The whole point of the books was to present a small picture of the world of adults to small children that they could understand and learn. Not as the basis of the world as it is. That is taking the map as the territory writ large.
The author is assuming that things they understand are better without any reference to the world. It references. That could be funny in itself in a "deliberately apply the causation backwards sense". That people so readily believe such utter irrationality because it flatters their egos and would support tearing down what actually works is the frightening part. We have seen it before and only ends in tears.
It is another example of the frankly goddamned stupid idea that any system they cannot understand without any learning is automatically inferior. Reality really doesn't work that way.
Now that is weird. Yesterday I thought the same thing, that the durable jobs are those that a child can understand: grocer, teacher, police officer, firefighter, plumber, and so on. And I was thinking specifically about Richard Scarry books.
Me too! Seriously just yesterday I was thinking it would be valuable to study the NEC electrical code with my kids. I may be wrong but seems like electricians fall into the same category. As a side note: I have a house going through final trade inspections now and an issue came up where I literally turned to stack exchange to educate myself on the issue prior to going back to my electrician to insist he back off from his stance that he’s right and the inspectors wrong (not that this is a sustainable position in the first place).. but it was interesting how the stack exchange culture has gone beyond developers.
> the durable jobs are those that a child can understand: grocer
I don’t know how many grocers you have left in your village, but where I live they’ve basically gone extinct and those that are left look to be pretty poor and precarious, made irrelevant decades ago by supermarkets.
I was extremely lucky to transfer to a team at my employer that did full-time making (like Maker Faire). After many years of being totally ignorant about things that I cared about a lot (making structures that do interesting things), I was finally able to work with people who had been raised as gearheads and makers, and I found that I truly enjoyed working with my hands. Now, there are many things I don't like to do manually, but I will spend a ton of time designing parts in CAD, coercing my printer or mill to make them, and then assemble the parts into something larger/more interesting.
Eventually I managed to build some really cool stuff, including a scanning microscope (from CNC parts) and a "Bean Machine" which demonstrates the central limit theorem. Now I'm experimenting with rendering 3D surfaces into wood by writing python programs that output g-code so they can be milled (this would take far too long to do by hand unless I was retired).
Fun stuff. I think working with your hands (not typing on a computer, but cutting, carving, shaping, making etc) can be very enjoyable.
I am mechanical engineer by trade. I definitely miss the times going to the workshop and watching a part I designed being built and being able to touch it. Definitely miss that in software. When I did mobile and desktop you could at least use the app but with server stuff you have nothing tangible. Often it’s nice to be able to work without any equipment but sometimes I really being able to touch my work.
I used to do software for large fruit sorting machines. Nothing quite like standing in a huge multi multi million dollar buildings built to house a number of these machines all working together through your software and for the many many many thousands of concurrent actions working in perfect harmony at speed. Especially when you give those machines "smarts" and you see it adapt to changes in the environment / deal with problems. It was fun setting it all up testing, all hands on with the electronics/mechanicals
Also, nothing quite like the terror of when it all goes horribly wrong and you end up helping clear a mountain of fruit turned into unplanned jam(jelly) and everyone turns and looks at you....
I spoke with some robotics engineers based in Brisbane, Australia who work on the machines that load bulk carriers (ships that carry coal, iron ore, grain etc.)
Though essentially just a conveyor belt, these things are simply enormous, as are the chains of operations that bring trains of ore and empty ships to port.
The largest of these is a coal loader that, through which one percent of the nation's GDP is flowing.
When it breaks down the pressure to get it going is intense.
It also gives some insight into why as bushfires rage across the country fuelled by the highest ever recorded temperatures, it's somehow controversial to discuss climate change.
It does look simple, but I spent many years in the bulk materials handling industry and there are also rail receival stations, electromagnets to remove contaminants, belt weighing equipment (real time volume calculation), samplers, surge bins (with vibratory hoppers under them), stackers, reclaimers, yard machine anti-collision systems, stockpile impact detection systems and a vast array of PLCs, front end processors, and application-level logic to manage it all.
> When it breaks down the pressure to get it going is intense.
Yeah. When you get calls at 2 am as lightning struck a microwave which stopped a network connect which stopped a database replication which stopped a stockpile calculation which caused a yard machine boom collision you really know how much fun it is.
On the bright side this industry is safety obsessed and quality engineering focused, so cutting corners is neither expected nor tolerated.
> It also gives some insight into why as bushfires rage across the country fuelled by the highest ever recorded temperatures, it's somehow controversial to discuss climate change.
Agreed. Although there are plenty of other factors which can improve bushfire outcomes as illustrated by the national Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (of which most national fire agencies are members) research: https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/utilisation/overview.
yes, some places were 2k+ a minute with a knock on effect for any serious delay, like when dealing with pomegranates, that when it rains they tend to split (to release the seeds) so everything is designed to put large volumes through as fast as possible during harvest
You should check out https://tplang.org/ It's Open-Source and part of the https://camotics.org/ CNC simulator. TPL is JavaScript with built-in extensions that make generating GCode programmatically and visualizing the results much easier. Disclaimer, I am the author.
I have an X-carve, which is basic X-Y-Z stages hooked up to a hand router, for about $2K. I have one carving behind me right now (currently playing with generating sine wave and reaction-diffusion patterns in numpy, converting those to heightmaps in OpenSCAD, generating g-code with MeshCAM, and then rendering in wood).
There are also 6040 mills, which are similar but built differently, and shopbots, which are big but capable, plus a bunch of others. To me, the X-carve was the right combination of price, features, and support. I previously had the ShapeOko but it really wasn't capable enough.
Last night I watched a very good documentary called "Takumi" which was commissioned by Lexus. The version I watched was a 53 minute long cut-down of the original 60,000 hour long piece—claimed to be the longest documentary ever produced—that intimately explores the working lives of four Japanese master craftspeople who spend 60,000 hours to achieve the master artisan status known as "Takumi."
It was made to "emphasize that, in a world where technology and AI can replicate or better anything man can do, human craftsmanship still has a purpose and could become more prized than ever."
The short version I watched streams on Amazon Prime. The full version, "Takumi: a 60,000 hour story of the survival of human craft" is available online hosted with a special video player (with a kind-of weird UI) that allows the user to quickly move about the 60,000 hour (6.8 year) timeline:
The documentary is not actually 60000 hours long. There is well under an hour of footage for the carpenter so the whole thing is maybe a few hours and it loops those shots repeatedly. It is presented as if it is that long to emphasize the thesis of the documentary. It is kind of ironic that in a film which makes a big deal of the notion that there are no short cuts to mastery they took such a short cut in producing the supposedly very long documentary. I was disappointed to discover this because I was actually looking forward to at least a few hundred hours of nice footage of the carpenter working. They could easily have done that.
Of course with these traditional long apprenticeships you spent your first year filing and making the tea :-)
AT my first place we did have some master carpenters who made some of the hydrodynamic models - the work they did was breathtakingly fabulous works of art in their own right
As a young kid, I was plagued by complicated questions, one of which was "Are humans special? (And if not, is all futile?)".
At that time my argument was to point of the ways in which humans are better than machines. But I have to say that it is not even necessary to go down that route. If there is some life form that is smarter than humans, or some machine, then it does not detract from the basic departure point that some values or value propositions are absolute. The ability to discover the Pythagorean theorem is absolute in that way. You either discover it, or you don't (or you discover only the special cases). It doesn't matter how many other entities discover the Pythagorean theorem.
Now I don't mean absolute in the sense of the ubermensch or some dumb crap like that, but I do mean that values are values even in isolation. I think the tinkerer's spirit is very much like that. If you are devoted to your pursuit, then it doesn't mean you have to best some notion of the best. It's like that with an appreciation for life too. If you see a beautiful landscape, then that moment in itself is valuable and irreplaceable, whether there are many such or few such—each is valuable in isolation.
I don't the the point of being human was ever to prove ourselves the smartest.
One of the difficult things to cope with is our need for meaning. It's tempting to think that it's exogenous - if we look hard enough we'll find it "out there" somewhere. But now that we've looked under every rock and around every star we're starting to have to deal with the fact that it exists only inside our heads, and is socially constructed. But that doesn't mean it's not important. In some ways it lets us take ownership of the need to make meaning ourselves - to craft it.
To the universe, we're not special. To ourselves, we can be.
The thing about (simple, repetitive) manual labor is that you can think about other things while you do it. There's something liberating about working a full day while being able to think about whatever you like.
You can't think about other things while you're programming. Of course, you get paid a lot more and it's easier on your body.
One of the things I genuinely enjoyed about welding was that it was difficult enough to be engaging, easy enough that I could let my mind relax in to the flow of things and roll ideas around in my head while I worked. On a good day, it felt like my shift passed in a flash.
Exactly so. You couldn't reach it every day, but the majority of the time I genuinely looked forward to and enjoyed the work, because is was so amenable to the flow state.
I wanted to quote the article, but it looks like they've disabled text selection????
Anyway, I think killing shop was short sighted. I never got to experience it as I graduated in the 00s, but having hobbies that involve handiwork, building things teaches you discipline, patience, and a way of thinking different to and complimentary with typical "knowledge" work. I think general mechanical skills are extremely useful for young people to learn.
As far as shop goes, we still had shop class in middle school around 2005. I believe high school also offered some sort of mechanic class, where you could do simple work on cars. Not 100% sure because I didn't take it.
It's a good book. We encourage too many people to be abstract symbol manipulators and encourage too few people to work with their hands (or hands and mind together): http://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boost.... It's got to be pretty obvious not just to me, but to just about any intellectually honest person teaching at non-elite colleges and universities that a whole lot of people are in them who take out lots of student loans but get very little out of the process.
+1. I think the book would be much more popular if it were not for the clunky title, which is a tribute to George Will's book "Statecraft as Soulcraft".
Great book, read it several times and gifted it several more. His second book "The World Beyond Your Head" is much deeper and even more insightful. I hope he continues to probe and write like that.
It was the political science department, not the philosophy department. (For academic purposes, political philosophy is a subfield of political science, not of philosophy.)
I'm not sure where your curiosity comes from—Crawford is presented in the story as taking a break from his academic career to work on the motorcycle. There's no continuity between the two things except his own personality and involvement.
I absolutely cannot stand that book. It's largely a narcissist making superficial observations about what "doing a good job" means in the face of his son's very real mental health struggles.
To each his own. I took it as him admitting his failure at "doing a good job," and his son's mental health struggles as just being a kid. Riding a motorcycle, camping in a tent, and hiking in the mountains are exhausting. I'm 29, in reasonably good health, and after a week of hiking even I am glad to take a shower and sleep in a proper bed.
Mahatma Gandhi's "Nai Talim" (New Education) [1] placed prominent importance on working with hands. When I first visited the US, I was really impressed by the number of people who undertook DIY projects, and knew woodworking etc. I also think that the importance that Germany pays to vocational training is one of the leading reasons for their engineering dominance.
Maybe it is time to remember the great man's ideas during his 150th anniversary and put it into wider practice.
The author separates knowledge work, which I think would include programming, from “working with your hands”. Although I agree there’s a difference between building a house and building a program, the feeling I get from really coding is closer to the sense I get when I play the guitar than I get when I “brainstorm” a solution to a problem. One of the reasons I’ve stayed away from a management track is because of the sense of “making something” with my keyboard.
I agree that playing and/or creating music is closer to programming than is often appreciated.
I also think that there is great value engaging in crafting things with your hands if you're a programmer, specifically. At least, there is for me. Even though there is a certain amount of overlap, working with my hands engages a different part of my brain than working with code. Doing that is a bit like a mental vacation for me, and I often have insights into whatever software problem I'm having while doing it, because while my mind is active, the "programming part" is allowed to relax. And the greatest insights often come under those circumstances.
I've been working as a programmer for 29 years now, and almost since the beginning there has been a story ciruculating about how new technology ('4GLs', then 'Rules Engines' and now 'AI') would put programmers out of business.
It's never happened, of course. But if AI does ramp up and take over a bunch of programming space, it may drive IT jobs ever lower on the social/pay scale, perhaps even elevating manual labor.
I miss TechShop. But they pretended to be a growth startup and ran the business into the ground through overexpansion. Then there was TheShop.build. They tried to acquire the assets of TechShop without the liabilities, and that didn't work out. There's Humanmade in SF, but it costs twice as much per month as TechShop did. Mostly the same old TechShop equipment, too.
There are some other "maker spaces", but they're more into "education", which seems to mean activities for the middle school rat race to get into college. Kids at desks all doing roughly the same thing, basically.
What kept TechShop going for a while was Etsy. Etsy used to require that you make your own stuff. But computer-controlled laser cutters were allowed for "hand-made" items. TechShop SF had eight of them busily cutting wood and plastic 24/7 at peak. Then Etsy allowed outsourcing manufacturing and that disappeared.
It was fun while it lasted. But the maker movement is over in Silicon Valley. Space is too expensive and the smart people don't have the free time.
Working with pine and balsa is surprisingly easy and cheap (hand saw is $9, drill is $20, xcircut or paper is more or less free, 8ft of 2x1 pine is $2) with balsa you can get away with just a pocket knife and self tapping screws or just hot glue. I used to use it for making robots, it’s better than 3d printing if you don’t need something precise and repeatable.
You can save money on dimensional lumber if you don’t have a large vehicle and only need shorter pieces by buying the largest pieces at the hardware store and cutting it in the parking lot.
Pine and MDF are amazing for slapping together prototypes, jigs, and custom furniture. They're the perfect blend between adequate strength and malleability. I haven't tried balsa but I bet it's perfect for smaller stuff.
A year and a half ago I finally made my way back to hands-on hardware development after a few years in data science. It's very satisfying to have a job where there's some physical labor involved and I recognize how lucky I am to be in such a job in a tech company.
[0] https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-tr...