Ugh, I don't have the time/focus to wade through all of this. With that qualification, a few comments: # Crafts-men (-persons) used to be a mainstay of usefu

Ugh, I don't have the time/focus to wade through all of this. With that qualification, a few comments: # Crafts-men (-persons) used to be a mainstay of useful products. There was an aesthetic, but they were also successful because they made the best that was available in a locality. # A significant portion of "craft" is creation and maintenance of tools. Good craftsmen spent considerable effort acquiring and maintaining the best tools for the job. And many were rather inventive in coming up with their own tools an processes. Some caught on and spread; some never escaped their locality and isolation. Many were replicated independently and frequently. How much of this sounds like today's software industry? A lot, to me. Programming is a craft. Anyone who's had a brush with e.g. UML, automated systems, etc., knows it's not a hard science (the underlying mathematics is, but we're talking about "programming", here). I'd say that craft begets artisans beget art. It's a continuum, not an either/or (XOR, as it were). P.S. Artists would be lost -- at least, to perpetuity -- without the "craft" of their profession. How to make and choose materials that provide for expression and for durability, for example. Canvases, pigments, binders, instruments, notation, sociological/anthropological (whether formal or otherwise) studies (folk songs, dances, etc.).