Monday 2 May 2011

A bit of thinking

One arrangement of the thoughts I was having after re-reading parts of Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft (otherwise known as The Case for Working with your Hands), a bit more David Pye and listening to Richard Sennett and David Gauntlett on the radio yesterday.  I have arranged this in a variety of ways - flickr link to come - and this is by no means the end of my post-it notes and ideas on the subject, but for me at the moment the main questions are as follows:

Are modern methods of sharing (you tube tutorials etc) any less valid than traditional master/apprenticeship tutorials?

Is physical making more valid than out souring ones making, and just having the idea or concept yourself?

By valid I mean does it hold less value (emotional, financial, experiential)?

There are obviously things that one cannot get from videos or online picture tutorials, similarly to learning from a book, that you do get with a master teacher, learning directly from an expert, but is that due to the lack of skill with which we use the resources (could we make our video tutorials more detailed for example) (idea discussed by Richard Sennett on R4 show, Thinking Allowed)

Is an idea or concept any less of a made thing than a physical object?  Does the skill of the outsourced maker lie in not adding their own personality to the object they have been asked to make?

Many many questions sparked off by these heard conversations and read ideas.   More to follow on this.

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