This is not the renaissance. You are not an artisan. Go around to the back door, you’re a smelly tradesman. Thinking through the implications of the whole artisan-crafts-guilds meme in the future-of-work debates led me to an odd conclusion: the future is significantly brighter (or less bleak) than people realize. So long as you stop thinking in terms of crafts and aim to practice a trade instead, there is more work for humans than people realize. What’s the difference? It’s the difference between bards and chimney-sweeps. The future of work looks bleaker than it needs to for one simple reason: we bring consumption sensibilities to production behavior choices. Even our language reflects this: we “shop around” for careers. We look for prestigious brands to work for. We look for “fulfillment” at work. Sometimes we even accept pay cuts to be associated with famous names. This is work as fashion accessory and conversation fodder. We can think of this as conspicuous production, by analogy to conspicuous consumption. First-world artisan tendencies take this to a logical extreme. When you subconsciously think of work as something you consume for pleasure, you end up with a possibly irrational (economically speaking) attraction to artisan work. Even those who don’t actually end up as artisans choose work the way they choose cars, jewelry or handbags, over-valuing things like resume-value and exposure-value. The result is a misguided analysis of the impact of computers and automation that makes us think the future of work is much darker than it is. What’s the difference between a tradesman and an artisan? Think chimney-sweep versus bard as the extremes of the spectrum. Both are archetypes that mostly disappeared with late industrialization in the early twentieth century, thanks in part to automation, but there the similarities end. One fulfilled a critical economic function by engaging in unpleasant and inconspicuous production. The other fulfilled a non-critical economic function in the economy by engaging in pleasurable and conspicuous production . One generated a higher, less volatile income, but with little potential for upward mobility, the other generated a lower, more volatile income, but with more potential for upward mobility. The median chimney sweep did better than the median bard, but the best bards did better than the best chimney-sweeps (by finding favor with a king for instance). Since this was before mass media, bard reward distribution was not as skewed as it would become, but it was still skewed. The emerging future of work does resemble pre-modern patterns of labor organization in a few key ways, but most of us are going to turn into digital-era chimney sweeps rather than bards. And this is a good thing. ribbonfarm/2013/07/10/you-are-not-an-artisan/
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 07:39:14 +0000
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