14 ms·

Are We Losing the Secrets of the Masters?

66 points by damian2000 13y ago

marshray 13y ago
I completely agree that as a culture we are losing a lot of our traditional skill and craftsmanship. But still, I can't shake the feeling like this is one of those "kids these days...get off my lawn" moments.
- tomphoolery 13y ago
  And replacing it with new skills and new craftsmanship. Let's see one of those fancypants metalworkers even concieve of (let alone build) even the most simple user authentication system!
  - noonespecial 13y ago
    Umm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(device) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(device) ?
    - marshray 13y ago
      Technically, that's more of an authorization or access control system.
- aimhb 13y ago
  How is this at all annoyance with a younger generation? There's a lot of knowledge, such as of music, that's only passed on through oral or hands-on teaching. This knowledge lives on by mere virtue of the continued survival of the people who know it. If enough of these kinds of "masters" die, some if not most of that knowledge will be lost forever.
  - marshray 13y ago
    I'm just saying that this viewpoint is typically a common concern of older generations - and this makes me feel old.
    - vanderZwan 13y ago
      Are you sure that old skills becoming irrelevant isn't just uncomfortable because it reminds us of our own mortality?
      - aimhb 13y ago
        Pretty sure. Also "irrelevant" isn't really the right word as much as "lost". Examining the word completely myopically, things like ability to play piano might seem relatively useless. However, science has recently been revealing that music is a lot more important — to the brain, moods, and the body, even — than we would have guessed it was 50 years ago. If we allow our knowledge of music to be lost in between the era of musicians and some future rebirth of classical music, then what good have we done? A good example of the waste that can occur is that of Roman formulations for concrete. Because the information about how the concrete was formulated has been lost, we have spent a tremendous amount of effort just trying to reverse engineer Roman structures like the Colosseum to figure out how they achieve the unique properties that they do. Also consider that the Romans had no way of imagining how important concrete formulations would be in the future. To them, after the fall of Rome, concrete formulations were probably just as "irrelevant" in their minds as well. I am not so much afraid of my own death as I am that we'll lose knowledge and skill that we as a species have spent so long refining.
timmaxw 13y ago
This is only tangentially related to the article, but 507 Mechanical Movements is available as a website: http://507movements.com/ http://507movements.com/ Some of the movements have been animated as well.
ryanackley 13y ago
Here is a practical concern: What if there was some kind of collapse of society or catastrophic scenario where it wasn't possible to run power plants, internet, and/or phone service on a large scale anymore. Choose your favorite doomsday scenario: Comet hits the earth, nuclear holocaust, or even an all-out conventional global war. How long would it take for the world to come back from that without access to our current electronic tools and online repo of limitless knowledge? Many fundamental things would have to be re-learned.
- marshray 13y ago
  Go find some old films and see where Japan and Germany were just 5-10 years after being all but flattened in WWII. They didn't reconstruct in isolation obviously, but it's pretty amazing what humans can do.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Not really responsive to the question, though. We (the Allied powers, particularly the US) went out of our way to give Japan and Germany a helping hand after the war, having seen the problems caused by allowing defeated nations to fall into ruin.
    - johnchristopher 13y ago
      What nations and what period of US history are you referring to ?
      - pjc50 13y ago
        Presumably the post-WW1 era of collapse in Germany, which is usually credited as a major cause of WW2.
        johnchristopher 13y ago
        Ah, I thought gp was referring to nations the US would have defeated before WWII.
eksith 13y ago
Much like the (re)discovery of Absinthe production, I believe a lot of these crafts will be rediscovered and preserved. The difference these days, rather than centuries past, is the exceptional amount of documentation and preservation of technique in text (and recently video). There are innumerable resources available today that just wasn't back then so this information will be preserved by and large. We just need to ensure it's carefully curated for young minds to absorb well into the future. Every time I go to a swap meet or a tag sale, the first thing I look for are books. Even old magazines, trade publications and catalogs can reveal a great deal of ingenuity and fascinating technical knowhow. I don't have the time to scan and digitize these (besides, I don't know what the copyright implications would be), but I try to see what learn from these as much as possible. Many of these were limited print to begin with and were summarily discarded once the next seasons' gadgets/appliances came about so they need preservation. I can see prime real-estate for a startup doing something similar. It's a massive job to rebuild a library, but I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to get access to all these treasures.
- Amadou 13y ago
  It's a massive job to rebuild a library, Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright, at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for archiving. But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to read today because the hardware is so rare. The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels. We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically meaningless "metadata."
chaffneue 13y ago
I'm one of those people that answers this question, "absolutely not!" Even though it's not in the news or on everyone's Facebook timeline, there are amazing craftsmen still roaming the earth and passing their craft down to beginners. My evidence? I run a website that's dedicated to a traditional art called Pinstriping http://www.pinheadlounge.com/ http://www.pinheadlounge.com/ . Even though the legendary masters may not be directly connected to the site, you can clearly see their influences on the craft. I think it's careless to assume just because someone isn't tweeting their entire life or making huge waves, that they're not training the next apprentice. A lot of this work has always been a little behind the scenes, offline and a definitely has its share of trade secrets. I see many young people on this site doing killer work and this is only one, tiny sampling of the niche. Take one of the most well regarded users on the site and an aging craftsman (almost 40 years of experience): http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868.JPG http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868.... And compare it with a upcoming novice, who's just doing killer work (and is a woman, I might add): http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233425_716503191697820_1910565040_n.jpg http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233... I've also worked with metal smiths, letterheads, prepress/letterpress/typesetting/lead pros, hot rod enthusiasts and all kinds of other "lost arts" that are readily being passed to anyone who wants to learn. There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be digital any time soon.
- damian2000 13y ago
  Thanks for the comment - great skills. Reminds me of this short bbc doco I saw on the art of fairground signwriting ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23313762 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23313762
  - chaffneue 13y ago
    Wow - another great example of a young craftsman doing amazing work. That workshop looks like a great creative space. I have plans to extend the pinstriping site concept to wall dogs and sign writers next. Seems like the disciplines have a lot of overlap. I think I've even used a few of the brushes and paint brands in that video :)
droithomme 13y ago
The 507 mechanical movements book he references is fairly well known and has been discussed in various places before. There is a website dedicated to each movement from the book, with animations for many of the motions. http://507movements.com/ http://507movements.com/
npx 13y ago
I thought this was interesting, but I disagree with the premise. In the software world, the equivalent of building a machine shop from scratch is called bootstrapping. The first programs are written in an assembly language which is difficult for humans to read or write. These first programs generally facilitate a higher level of abstraction; a compiler or interpreter for a more human readable programming language. This second generation of tools allows for quicker development cycles, leading to even better tools. For instance, the C language led to Unix[1] which led to the Internet which led to a combinatorial explosion of software. It works the same way in physical reality - with each generation of development, the act of creation inches closer to pure thought. It's called progress. If you can't keep up, I don't care. A similar phenomenon happens to human beings. Societal developments insulate us from the hardship of actually being self-sufficient. It's easier to be prosperous now than ever before in history, and it's made us all incredibly soft. Grab a kitchen knife and try to kill a squirrel before you start planning your post-apocalyptic charcoal forge. 1. I realize that Unix sort of begat C, but that doesn't really change anything.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Of course not. I contribute with some time and money to a local maker movement, and we guide young people to make things. What this article does not say is that in the past manufacturing was a pain in the ass. Drills or rivets had to be done by hand only 60 years ago, with automatic machines extremely expensive and inconvenient (big, noisy and poisonous to you). Metal workers will have health problems with the fumes, and lose one or two fingers over their life when they put their hand when they should not. Artisans were also very secretive about their knowledge. Now, the 507 movements book is online, and animated so it is way easier to understand, we have computers that let us simulate or do the most complex operation. You can get any book, ever written, in the world, online!! (Impossible just 10 years ago!!) Not only that but you can see videos showing you actually how they do what they do. We have 3d design on computers, we have 3d printing on plastic, metal or ceramic(with EDM, FMD, STA, sintering incredible machines). We have cartesian, delta robots, we have powerful and cheap automatic tools like dremel or drills, or lathes. We have laser and plasma cutters that cut 20mm steel like butter. We have $100 webcam microscopes and spectrometers. We have the Internet and we could collaborate designs over the world just sending a file. Sorry but the "any past was better" makes me sick.
- smoyer 13y ago
  I agree with everything you've said but ... there are certain skills that can't be automated. And many of these skills require practice so that your hands are making precisely the right movements. You can't be good at playing the piano without practice, and there are still certain hand-crafting skills that are the same.
- beambot 13y ago
  I appreciate the elegance and power of CAD and computerized design, but I also worry that we're losing that hands-on approach... or in the words of Vernor Vinge: "No user-servicable parts inside" (Rainbows End) I sure wish I'd taken more time to learn non-computerized fabrication from my grandfather. As a "fix it yourself" farmer, that man could build / repair damn near any mechanical apparatus. There's a lot of hard-won experience in those old artisans, so we shouldn't be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The more we can learn from the past, the better. Knowledge and skills aren't mutually exclusive.
jwr 13y ago
For a good take on this kind of thinking, I'd recommend reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer's_Hammer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer's_Hammer). From the wikipedia page: "Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by the means of the preservation of the book The Way Things Work, which had been wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank prior to Hammerfall and later retrieved by a resourceful character who realized its potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world." I found myself inspired by this book — now I often think about what I could build all by myself in a post-apocalyptic world.
retrogradeorbit 13y ago
I think one area where we may be losing the secrets is with vacuum tube amplifier behaviour and design. Electrical Engineering students no longer study it (for obvious reasons... its all been replaced with solid state) but it is still important in audio recording. Companies still make tube gear (like for example Universal Audio in California) but I have heard that it is becoming basically impossible to hire an electrical engineer with tube circuit design skills.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  This makes me more relieved that Jeri Ellsworth managed to make transistors (in a kiln starting with a plain silicon wafer) after interviewing retired Fairchild engineers about some details. At least we probably won't lose that, assuming someone survives who watched her videos.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  Vacuum tube audio is the very picture of a solved problem. You can look it up in a textbook or copy the schematic of old equipment. Vacuum device engineering is alive and well. It's just that a top radio power designer or particle accelerator designer won't throw away his career to become a handbook engineer designing antique reproductions at a what amounts to a toy company.
- mng2 13y ago
  Tubes aren't all that terribly different from transistors; the characteristic curves are slightly different but the circuit topologies are basically the same as those of transistor circuits.

66 points by damian2000 13y ago

I completely agree that as a culture we are losing a lot of our traditional skill and craftsmanship. But still, I can't shake the feeling like this is one of those "kids these days...get off my lawn" moments.

tomphoolery 13y ago
And replacing it with new skills and new craftsmanship. Let's see one of those fancypants metalworkers even concieve of (let alone build) even the most simple user authentication system!
- noonespecial 13y ago
  Umm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(device) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(device) ?
  - marshray 13y ago
    Technically, that's more of an authorization or access control system.
aimhb 13y ago
How is this at all annoyance with a younger generation? There's a lot of knowledge, such as of music, that's only passed on through oral or hands-on teaching. This knowledge lives on by mere virtue of the continued survival of the people who know it. If enough of these kinds of "masters" die, some if not most of that knowledge will be lost forever.
- marshray 13y ago
  I'm just saying that this viewpoint is typically a common concern of older generations - and this makes me feel old.
  - vanderZwan 13y ago
    Are you sure that old skills becoming irrelevant isn't just uncomfortable because it reminds us of our own mortality?
    - aimhb 13y ago
      Pretty sure. Also "irrelevant" isn't really the right word as much as "lost". Examining the word completely myopically, things like ability to play piano might seem relatively useless. However, science has recently been revealing that music is a lot more important — to the brain, moods, and the body, even — than we would have guessed it was 50 years ago. If we allow our knowledge of music to be lost in between the era of musicians and some future rebirth of classical music, then what good have we done? A good example of the waste that can occur is that of Roman formulations for concrete. Because the information about how the concrete was formulated has been lost, we have spent a tremendous amount of effort just trying to reverse engineer Roman structures like the Colosseum to figure out how they achieve the unique properties that they do. Also consider that the Romans had no way of imagining how important concrete formulations would be in the future. To them, after the fall of Rome, concrete formulations were probably just as "irrelevant" in their minds as well. I am not so much afraid of my own death as I am that we'll lose knowledge and skill that we as a species have spent so long refining.

timmaxw 13y ago

This is only tangentially related to the article, but 507 Mechanical Movements is available as a website: http://507movements.com/ http://507movements.com/ Some of the movements have been animated as well.

ryanackley 13y ago

Here is a practical concern: What if there was some kind of collapse of society or catastrophic scenario where it wasn't possible to run power plants, internet, and/or phone service on a large scale anymore. Choose your favorite doomsday scenario: Comet hits the earth, nuclear holocaust, or even an all-out conventional global war. How long would it take for the world to come back from that without access to our current electronic tools and online repo of limitless knowledge? Many fundamental things would have to be re-learned.

marshray 13y ago
Go find some old films and see where Japan and Germany were just 5-10 years after being all but flattened in WWII. They didn't reconstruct in isolation obviously, but it's pretty amazing what humans can do.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Not really responsive to the question, though. We (the Allied powers, particularly the US) went out of our way to give Japan and Germany a helping hand after the war, having seen the problems caused by allowing defeated nations to fall into ruin.
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    What nations and what period of US history are you referring to ?
    - pjc50 13y ago
      Presumably the post-WW1 era of collapse in Germany, which is usually credited as a major cause of WW2.
      - johnchristopher 13y ago
        Ah, I thought gp was referring to nations the US would have defeated before WWII.

eksith 13y ago

Much like the (re)discovery of Absinthe production, I believe a lot of these crafts will be rediscovered and preserved. The difference these days, rather than centuries past, is the exceptional amount of documentation and preservation of technique in text (and recently video). There are innumerable resources available today that just wasn't back then so this information will be preserved by and large. We just need to ensure it's carefully curated for young minds to absorb well into the future. Every time I go to a swap meet or a tag sale, the first thing I look for are books. Even old magazines, trade publications and catalogs can reveal a great deal of ingenuity and fascinating technical knowhow. I don't have the time to scan and digitize these (besides, I don't know what the copyright implications would be), but I try to see what learn from these as much as possible. Many of these were limited print to begin with and were summarily discarded once the next seasons' gadgets/appliances came about so they need preservation. I can see prime real-estate for a startup doing something similar. It's a massive job to rebuild a library, but I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to get access to all these treasures.

Amadou 13y ago
It's a massive job to rebuild a library, Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright, at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for archiving. But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to read today because the hardware is so rare. The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels. We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically meaningless "metadata."

chaffneue 13y ago

I'm one of those people that answers this question, "absolutely not!" Even though it's not in the news or on everyone's Facebook timeline, there are amazing craftsmen still roaming the earth and passing their craft down to beginners. My evidence? I run a website that's dedicated to a traditional art called Pinstriping http://www.pinheadlounge.com/ http://www.pinheadlounge.com/ . Even though the legendary masters may not be directly connected to the site, you can clearly see their influences on the craft. I think it's careless to assume just because someone isn't tweeting their entire life or making huge waves, that they're not training the next apprentice. A lot of this work has always been a little behind the scenes, offline and a definitely has its share of trade secrets. I see many young people on this site doing killer work and this is only one, tiny sampling of the niche. Take one of the most well regarded users on the site and an aging craftsman (almost 40 years of experience): http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868.JPG http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868.... And compare it with a upcoming novice, who's just doing killer work (and is a woman, I might add): http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233425_716503191697820_1910565040_n.jpg http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233... I've also worked with metal smiths, letterheads, prepress/letterpress/typesetting/lead pros, hot rod enthusiasts and all kinds of other "lost arts" that are readily being passed to anyone who wants to learn. There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be digital any time soon.

damian2000 13y ago
Thanks for the comment - great skills. Reminds me of this short bbc doco I saw on the art of fairground signwriting ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23313762 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23313762
- chaffneue 13y ago
  Wow - another great example of a young craftsman doing amazing work. That workshop looks like a great creative space. I have plans to extend the pinstriping site concept to wall dogs and sign writers next. Seems like the disciplines have a lot of overlap. I think I've even used a few of the brushes and paint brands in that video :)

droithomme 13y ago

The 507 mechanical movements book he references is fairly well known and has been discussed in various places before. There is a website dedicated to each movement from the book, with animations for many of the motions. http://507movements.com/ http://507movements.com/

npx 13y ago

I thought this was interesting, but I disagree with the premise. In the software world, the equivalent of building a machine shop from scratch is called bootstrapping. The first programs are written in an assembly language which is difficult for humans to read or write. These first programs generally facilitate a higher level of abstraction; a compiler or interpreter for a more human readable programming language. This second generation of tools allows for quicker development cycles, leading to even better tools. For instance, the C language led to Unix[1] which led to the Internet which led to a combinatorial explosion of software. It works the same way in physical reality - with each generation of development, the act of creation inches closer to pure thought. It's called progress. If you can't keep up, I don't care. A similar phenomenon happens to human beings. Societal developments insulate us from the hardship of actually being self-sufficient. It's easier to be prosperous now than ever before in history, and it's made us all incredibly soft. Grab a kitchen knife and try to kill a squirrel before you start planning your post-apocalyptic charcoal forge. 1. I realize that Unix sort of begat C, but that doesn't really change anything.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

Of course not. I contribute with some time and money to a local maker movement, and we guide young people to make things. What this article does not say is that in the past manufacturing was a pain in the ass. Drills or rivets had to be done by hand only 60 years ago, with automatic machines extremely expensive and inconvenient (big, noisy and poisonous to you). Metal workers will have health problems with the fumes, and lose one or two fingers over their life when they put their hand when they should not. Artisans were also very secretive about their knowledge. Now, the 507 movements book is online, and animated so it is way easier to understand, we have computers that let us simulate or do the most complex operation. You can get any book, ever written, in the world, online!! (Impossible just 10 years ago!!) Not only that but you can see videos showing you actually how they do what they do. We have 3d design on computers, we have 3d printing on plastic, metal or ceramic(with EDM, FMD, STA, sintering incredible machines). We have cartesian, delta robots, we have powerful and cheap automatic tools like dremel or drills, or lathes. We have laser and plasma cutters that cut 20mm steel like butter. We have $100 webcam microscopes and spectrometers. We have the Internet and we could collaborate designs over the world just sending a file. Sorry but the "any past was better" makes me sick.

smoyer 13y ago
I agree with everything you've said but ... there are certain skills that can't be automated. And many of these skills require practice so that your hands are making precisely the right movements. You can't be good at playing the piano without practice, and there are still certain hand-crafting skills that are the same.
beambot 13y ago
I appreciate the elegance and power of CAD and computerized design, but I also worry that we're losing that hands-on approach... or in the words of Vernor Vinge: "No user-servicable parts inside" (Rainbows End) I sure wish I'd taken more time to learn non-computerized fabrication from my grandfather. As a "fix it yourself" farmer, that man could build / repair damn near any mechanical apparatus. There's a lot of hard-won experience in those old artisans, so we shouldn't be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The more we can learn from the past, the better. Knowledge and skills aren't mutually exclusive.

jwr 13y ago

For a good take on this kind of thinking, I'd recommend reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer's_Hammer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer's_Hammer). From the wikipedia page: "Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by the means of the preservation of the book The Way Things Work, which had been wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank prior to Hammerfall and later retrieved by a resourceful character who realized its potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world." I found myself inspired by this book — now I often think about what I could build all by myself in a post-apocalyptic world.

retrogradeorbit 13y ago

I think one area where we may be losing the secrets is with vacuum tube amplifier behaviour and design. Electrical Engineering students no longer study it (for obvious reasons... its all been replaced with solid state) but it is still important in audio recording. Companies still make tube gear (like for example Universal Audio in California) but I have heard that it is becoming basically impossible to hire an electrical engineer with tube circuit design skills.

prodigal_erik 13y ago
This makes me more relieved that Jeri Ellsworth managed to make transistors (in a kiln starting with a plain silicon wafer) after interviewing retired Fairchild engineers about some details. At least we probably won't lose that, assuming someone survives who watched her videos.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Vacuum tube audio is the very picture of a solved problem. You can look it up in a textbook or copy the schematic of old equipment. Vacuum device engineering is alive and well. It's just that a top radio power designer or particle accelerator designer won't throw away his career to become a handbook engineer designing antique reproductions at a what amounts to a toy company.
mng2 13y ago
Tubes aren't all that terribly different from transistors; the characteristic curves are slightly different but the circuit topologies are basically the same as those of transistor circuits.