>I take a very different view (similar to the guy who made a toaster from materials mined from the earth) Sure, you can take a different view but that doesn't

>I take a very different view (similar to the guy who made a toaster from materials mined from the earth) Sure, you can take a different view but that doesn't change the truth of the essay. Citing an experimental toaster is repeating the same mischaracterization in your previous comment. The essay is not about making "any usable pencil" or "any toaster". It seems like you want the "I, Pencil" essay to be something other than what it is. You want a MacGyver[1] themed essay but instead, got an unwanted essay about the cooperation required to make a simple manufactured object. >I can learn [...] a well-educated person can learn [...] The essay isn't about what a single person can _learn_. Instead, it highlights the counterintuitive point that no single person with the complete knowledge _exists_. >A much harder thing woudl be to reproduce a modern quantum physics lab Yes, things like silicon computer chips, communications satellites orbiting Earth, and particle accelerators are much harder but it misses the poetry of the essay. We already have intuitive sense that no single person knows how to build advanced technology projects. The author deliberately chose something that looked deceptively "simple" and dissected how much coordination in society it takes to make it. The "hidden" complexity is high enough to exceed the knowledge of a single person. Take just the wood of the pencil. I'd have to chop trees. I don't even know how to make an ax tool to chop the tree. Sure, I guess I could learn how to make an ax -- which means I guess I could learn how to smelt steel... which means I have to learn... and so on. The groove channel in the wood to hold the lead?!? Another series of rabbit holes of learning to manufacture that cut. Glue? Again, the learning is not impossible (given enough time). It still doesn't change the fact that no single person knows it all. I suppose I could make _a_ thing that people might call a "a pencil" in a few days... but to replicate _that_ specific "Number 2 hexagon painted pencil with a synthetic rubber eraser"?!? That would take me a lifetime of learning. Most of the learning time is spent learning how to reinvent tools that make other tools that are several steps removed from the final assembly of the pencil. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver#Plot