User:Δεριζαματζορπρομπλεμιναυστραλια/thematicpoliticsofcraft/SennetRichard

Prologue: Man as His Own Maker

Hannah Arendt The human condition=the engineer, or any maker of material things, is not master of his own house; politics, standing above the physical labor, has to provide the guidance, technology may be an unreliable ally in regaining control.∂

Pandora myth, culture founded on man-made things risks continual self-harm

material culture

craftsmanship, the skill of making things well

technique as a cultural issue

‘‘Craftsmanship’’ may suggest a way of life that waned with the advent of industrial society—but this is misleading. Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake

Craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labor

the desire to do something well for its own sake can be impaired by competitive pressure, by frustration, or by obsession

skill, commitment, and judgment

hand and head

Material culture provides in sum a picture of what human beings are capable of making

CHAPTER ONE The Troubled Craftsman

The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen, because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake

The craftsman represents the special human condition of being engaged

All craftsmanship is founded on skill developed to a high degree.

as skill progresses it becomes more problem attuned

as skill rises higher technique is not a mechanical activity

The emotional rewards craftsmanship holds out for attaining skill are twofold: people are anchored in tangible reality, and they can take pride in their work.

The Modern Hephaestus Ancient Weavers and Linux Programmers===

Homer, Hephaestus

civilisation and TOOls

Pandora

because craftwork ‘‘brought people out of the isolation, personified by the cave-dwelling Cyclopes, craft and community were, for the early Greeks, indissociable.

Hymn, craftsman is demioergos. (public, productive)

demioergoi- manuel workers like potters but also doctors, professional singers and heralds etc

slaves, not recognised, hymn in this period

greeks and other traditional societies took it for granted that the skills would be transmitted from generation to generation=Social norms counted for more than individual endowments in the traditional ‘‘skills society.’’

To become skilled required, personally, that one be obedient.

artisan-age of Homer-public man-woman Classican years- the craftsman’s honor had dimmed ‘We consider that the architects in every profession are more estimable and know more and are wiser than the artisans, because they know the reasons of the things which are done. ‘We consider that the architects in every profession are more estimable and know more and are wiser than the artisans, because they know the reasons of the things which are done.

ambiguuous meaning for women workers

peplos

The development of classical science contributed to the gendering of skill that produced the word craftman as appling to men=>We do not think of parenting, for instance, as a craft in the same sense that we think of plumbing or programming,

The classical philosopher most sympathetic to the archaic ideal of Hephaestus was Plato, who also worried about its demise. Ποιείν.craftsmen are all poets . . . they are not called poets, they have other names.’ Plato worried that these different names and indeed different skills kept people in his day from understanding what they shared=>language limitation

Linux. Craft and community

The Linux system is a public craft.----- The underlying software kernel in Linux code is available to anyone, it can be employed and adapted by anyone; people donate time to improve it.

free software ->cathedral and bazaar model

LInux community->demioergoi .

It is focused on achieving quality, It is focused on achieving quality tity on doing good work, which is the craftsman’s primordial mark of identity

In the traditional world of the archaic potter or doctor, standards for good work were set by the community, as skills passed down from generation to generation

WIkipedia, wrong entries, groups -communities

these communities (linux, wikip) problem= how can quality of knowledge coexist with free and equal exchange in a community?

Ancient pottery making, for instance, changed radically when the rotating stone disk holding a lump of clay came into use. In Linux the process of skill evolution is speeded up; change occurs daily

debuging-code is constantly evolving

There is in Linux a nearly instant relation between problem solving and problem finding

the demioergoi were frequently addressed in public by the names of their profession. All craftsmanship, indeed, has something of this impersonal character

Weakened Motivation Workers Demoralized by Command and by Competition

The modern world has two recipes for arousing the desire to work hard and well. One is the "moral imperative to do work for the sake of the community. The other recipe invokes competition": it supposes that competing against others stimulates the desire to perform well, and in place of communal cohesion, it promises individual rewards

moral imperative

soviet-houses- poor craftmanship was a barometer of other forms of material indifference