When the Craft Disappears, What Remains?
Thoughts on craftsmanship, cultural transitions, and choosing what still matters
His point is clear: we’ve been here before. The loom, the computer, the large language model — they all threaten to automate something we thought was uniquely ours.
But I want to focus not just on what we lose, but what we choose to hold onto.
Because what gets displaced isn’t just labor, or even identity. It's the specific kind of satisfaction that comes from mastering a craft over time — that slow, recursive accumulation of intuition and skill. We don't just fear replacement; we grieve the erosion of those long feedback loops that once made expertise feel sacred.
Still, I think there's something freeing in this transition. Not because the machines are magic (they're not), but because we finally have to confront the gap between technical skill and human purpose.
Probabilistic compute can guess what comes next. But it cannot want. It cannot believe. It cannot grieve, or hope, or change its mind. It cannot do the hard emotional labor of building trust, repairing harm, holding paradox, or choosing to forgive.
What’s striking is that these aren’t fringe human qualities. They’re central. The things machines can’t do are the things we’ve always relied on each other for at our most vulnerable and our most brilliant. As certain functional skills are absorbed by automation, it doesn’t diminish us, really, it simply clarifies where we are irreplaceable.
Yes, some art of the craft will vanish. Some crafts will become niches. That’s the rhythm of every technological age. But our agency lies in how we metabolize those changes — in whether we cling to roles that no longer require us, or we invent new rituals of contribution, creativity, and care.