[HN Gopher] Shop Class as Soulcraft (2006)
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Shop Class as Soulcraft (2006)
Author : moh_maya
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-04-24 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenewatlantis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewatlantis.com)
| kqr2 wrote:
| Should add 2006
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Which I think is hugely relevant. I can do things myself today
| that I would have had to hire a professional for in 2006.
|
| Overhauled a garage door opener (thank you youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE3GTc1h5N0 )
|
| Fixed a gas hot water heater with sandpaper.
|
| Various car repairs (intake gasket, oil changes, tire changes,
| emissions pump stuff). And while the author here says that
| China can't help you, I'm using a Chinese-build OBD reader and
| often made-in-china parts (either OE or ???).
|
| And props to whomever invented SharkBite. They are overused,
| but have saved me in a pickle.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I personally wouldn't trust a SharkBite fitting for a
| permanent repair. I guess they are code approved though, and
| they are great (if expensive) for quick fixes.
| tunguska wrote:
| This reminds me of Growth of the Soil. Same themes.
| danohuiginn wrote:
| In case you want more: the author expanded this article into a
| book
|
| https://www.matthewbcrawford.com/new-page-1-1-2
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| I actually wanted less --- i.e., I bought the book a long time
| ago, and have always been interested-but-not-interested-enough
| to actually read it -- so I'm really happy to discover this
| essay exists.
| iequery wrote:
| I'll freely admit TLDR - I'll get to it - but I strongly
| empathize.
|
| I was in one of the last cohorts of my high schools shop class. I
| made some ambitious projects (nothing mind blowing). I learned to
| ship instead of starting a new project!
|
| I learned CNC routing and plasma cutting. I learned CAD. I
| learned how to engage methodically with a dangerous system.
|
| My first tech jobs were in machining and CAD. Today I've drifted
| away.
|
| It's hard to keep working and learning. Techshop closed.
| Makerspaces have soldering guns and 3D printers, no Haas mills.
| The few with real equipment want you to drop thousands of $$$ and
| 6 months of time on taking their cert classes, instead of just a
| safety checkout. Maybe the latter is impossible with insurance,
| but I'm still annoyed. I can't afford a house in the Bay so I
| can't start building my own shop.
|
| Today I fiddle with hand tools and watch AvE and hope I'll find a
| shop or mentor that works with my life. If I ever get "fuck you
| money", I'll go start taking machining courses at a trade school
| full time. If I ever afford a house here or move, I'll aim to get
| a shop outbuilding and hire tutors to teach me the harder
| aspects.
|
| Is there a better path?? I'll read TFA and see if there's
| anything actionable, but I think it will just make me sadder. I
| guess I could go work in CAD again...
| pacman83 wrote:
| In Tucson, Xerocraft, a nonprofit makerspace, has lathe and
| Bridgeport knee mill [0] and is run less formally. Also, Tucson
| is cheap and somewhat funky. You might like it.
|
| [0] https://xerocraft.org/pages/metalshop
|
| Edit: Sorry, someone has gutted the web site, removing most of
| the information. The space itself has existed for quite a few
| years and I have been a volunteer member of staff since 2013.
| The tools are real. Despite the appearance probably given by
| this new website, the makerspace is not vaporware.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I had shop in middle school; I wish I had taken more vocational
| courses in high school, my school had a good program for that.
| Might have led me on a much more satisfying career trajectory.
| I enjoy programming for the most part, but it all seems
| intangible and non-permanent. I know that everything I do will
| be "legacy code" and considered obsolete in a few years. I'm
| certainly aware of "grass is greener" syndrome, but making and
| repairing tangible real-world things feels more satisfying. For
| now I satisfy this by driving an old car that has no
| electronics and that I can maintain with hand tools.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I'm in more-or-less the same boat, so I sympathize. There are
| nooks and crannies in every big city where you could have a
| semblance of a shop, but you're right. It's hard. Especially
| when you're not sure how long you're going to be around, so
| it's tough to justify investing.
|
| That said, it is amazing how much some people do with so
| little. Look at Clickspring's work
| (http://www.clickspringprojects.com/). The man is a freaking
| virtuoso and I think his shop is 4 feet x 10.
| showerst wrote:
| I wonder how much YouTube and younger generations are turning
| this trend around.
|
| I got interested in machining as an extension of general making
| thanks to Adam Savage, ThisOldTony, and a host of others.
|
| Between the pandemic and the Us-China tarifs spats the lead time
| on a new hobby lathe from someone like Precision Matthews is 3+
| months, and prices are through the roof for both new and used old
| iron.
|
| Anecdotally, a bunch of others in the amateur space seem to be
| knowledge workers and programmers who want to do something more
| physical.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Crawford articulates important ideas. Highly recommend. While not
| a summary at all, my favorite theme interpreted from his work is
| that physical competence is moral.
| moh_maya wrote:
| "I was sometimes quieted at the sight of a gang of conduit
| entering a large panel in a commercial setting, bent into
| nestled, flowing curves, with varying offsets, that somehow all
| terminated in the same plane. This was a skill so far beyond my
| abilities that I felt I was in the presence of some genius, and
| the man who bent that conduit surely imagined this moment of
| recognition as he worked. "
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| This should be the headline of /r/cableporn :-)
| Animats wrote:
| "Indebtedness could discipline workers, keeping them at
| routinized jobs in factories and offices, graying but in harness,
| meeting payments regularly."
|
| So much more cost-effective than slavery.
| desine wrote:
| This is one of my favorite books. Changed the way I looked at
| work and what I wanted to do with my life (always keeping a
| tangible output for my efforts). Along with Zen and the Art of
| Motorcycle Maintenance, the pair are wonderful motorcycle books
| that teach a lot about life and very little about motorcycles.
|
| I am a bit biased as someone who is fond of motorcycles, but
| they're both excellent without that, I think.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Another meditation on technology, that is perhaps more grounded
| than Zen. Worth a read:
|
| https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...
|
| What he does find, however, is that he must make peace with
| technology; it's a mistake, he says, to "assume there is a
| point on that line between the caveman's club and the moon shot
| that marks the moral turnaround, before which technology was
| somehow benign, after which it is malign."
| desine wrote:
| Thanks, I had not heard of this, but will definitely give it
| a read. Zen definitely does go a bit into lofty metaphysics,
| enough to lose some of the more casual readers. Shop Class as
| Soulcraft is very much in the physical world. I think that
| point on the line that many of seem to feel is when we no
| longer understand the underlying principles of the
| technology, but both (all three?) books examine the breaking
| down of these knowledge barriers. For anyone else still
| reading this comment - Zen focuses more on "quality" and it's
| definition, than the actual work. The physical acts of
| adjusting the bike serve as introduction to the discussion.
|
| Anyways thanks again for the recommendation.
| myself248 wrote:
| Every hackerspace/makerspace has been preaching this to anyone
| who'll stand still long enough to listen, too. Learning and doing
| things together is even more powerful than just learning and
| doing them in general.
|
| It's tough times right now for in-person gathering and
| collaboration, but as soon as it's safe to do so, you owe it to
| yourself to see what communities have sprung up locally, and/or
| start another one.
| Animats wrote:
| The maker era is over. It was over before the pandemic, after
| TechShop and TheShop.Build went bankrupt.
|
| What's left now as "maker spaces" are either arts and crafts
| clubs, or educational operations where kids are pushed through
| tasks to check the "Maker" box on their college resumes.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once
| fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to
| repair, whose expert fix often involves installing a pre-made
| replacement part.
|
| It's of course the last part that really grinds me gears. Or
| worse, they depend on flowcharts and consumer idiocy to first
| replace parts that have been proven to be fine, or could be
| tested first. At least Ebay liquifies this used part market.
| _Always_ sell your old junk. I 've even sold a smashed up iphone
| for $50.
|
| I had a cylinder misfire in a car and the dealership ignored my
| notes where I said I swapped around the coils and plugs several
| times but the misfire stayed in the same cylinder. Somehow they
| tried to sell me new coils and spark plugs which obviously were
| not the problem. Mindless flowchart followers, unsure if by
| design or by idiocy.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I once had a car get a bad oxygen sensor while on vacation.
| Since it was under warranty, it had to get towed 45 minutes to
| a dealership. I explicitly told them that the problem is a bad
| oxygen sensor.
|
| It took them 10 hours to figure out it was a bad oxygen sensor,
| and then another 2 to fix it.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| That seems odd. An O2 sensor problem will normally illuminate
| the amber "check engine" lamp, but the car remains perfectly
| drivable. No need to tow it anywhere. The shop technician can
| read the stored trouble codes and easily determine it's the
| O2 sensor, should take maybe 5 minutes do diagnose.
|
| I think someone was getting scammed here. Since it was a
| warranty repair, maybe the dealer was scamming the factory
| warranty program somehow.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| It's tricky to handle this, though. As a programmer, I've
| both had situations where the bug ticket had details I
| overlooked and situations where the attempt to specify a
| problem in the ticket led me on a wild goose chase.
| dlhavema wrote:
| I Can't agree more. Overly specific details in a ticket
| might mean that's the only place where the problem exists
| or it might mean that's the only place the problem was
| detected. Which lead to very different root causes...
| dexwiz wrote:
| At least 60% of people, even otherwise intelligent people, lack
| the skill to troubleshoot things. Either they cannot generate
| hypothesis, cannot design experiments, cannot correctly make
| conclusions from experiments, or don't understand using process
| of elimination to narrow down the issue. Lacking even one of
| these skills forces you to default to flowchart thinking, which
| is exactly that process encoded in a document.
| Arainach wrote:
| >Always sell your old junk.
|
| This approach isn't for everyone. There are serious costs in
| time to this kind of lifestyle. I _could_ spend a couple of
| hours on YouTube tearing something apart and trying to fix it.
| I _could_ spend time taking pictures, post something for sale,
| deal with idiots on Facebook who want me to drive 2 hours to
| give it to them for 10% of the asking price or trying to give
| answers about whether it was always kept securely in a vegan-
| friendly household, or I could not.
|
| Time is one of the most precious commodities. We all get a
| strictly finite amount of it. Whether someone is working
| multiple jobs trying to make ends meet or fortunate enough to
| be working as a software engineer who is well compensated but
| seemingly persistently oncall, free time is the rarest thing in
| my life and consequently the most precious. Everyone has their
| threshold, but unless something is in the hundreds or dollars
| or I can sell it to a coworker who will literally come get it
| from my desk (or porch), most things are simply not worth my
| time.
|
| I like taking things apart. I like building things. I have a
| wood shop in my garage, a soldering iron, and various other
| maker tools. But those are for things I _choose_ to spend time
| on because I find interesting.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| Agree. I think a great hobby for us programmer types is
| woodworking. It's less art and more science. Follow the plans, be
| precise with your measurements and cuts, and do the tedious
| sanding & finishing work, and you will create beautiful custom
| pieces for your house or as gifts that you can be proud of. It's
| very relaxing to do some woodworking in your garage shop after a
| day of sitting in front of your computer.
|
| You can get away with a basic shop for under $1000 (or even $500)
| worth of tools too. Table saw, some clamps, random orbit sander,
| skill saw for plywood, a screw gun or small finish nailer. It
| doesn't take much to get started. Add a miter saw and thickness
| planer later. Check out Woodworking for Mere Mortals on Youtube.
| Great place to get started.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Depending on where you live there may be a community tool
| library or shared workshop space available for a small fee. And
| if you take a woodworking course at a local community college
| or something they'll supply whatever tools you need, at least
| during the course!
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