The man with a wrench…
At a birthday party for a friend recently I was talking to V, who owns an engineering company, so (b)leading edge that they make small run objects that may never used beyond prototypes, racing cars, planes, working machines… He was telling me about the differences between the older craftsmen who are “45 and older and began as apprentices” and the younger ones who “emerge from university pressing buttons” The former he said just makes things “that bit more precisely” and “they can look and feel the difference”. To correct the long term problem this year that have taken on five apprentices. Reinventing crafts(men), you might say engineers… I didn’t tell him about the sociology text I have from the 60/70s which discussed and argued for the end of apprenticeships and its replacement with university degrees. Which V was explaining is the limits of the university system. Curiously these limits are the same ones that others are speaking of - which produce poor practitioners from psychotherapists to engineers ad beyond… The system cannot address the wrench… he believes.
The other side of the problem which V is not addressing is the introduction of 3D printing technology into the business, the deliberate eradication of human skills, thus making and repeating the same error he was discussing above again…. and again…
A Marxist has to smile at the sheer foolishness of capitalism and capitalists…
