Saturday, June 16, 2007

Helpless Hands: From Arts and Crafts to Blobitechture

- via Architecture and Morality

Organic Baby Farm's Wacky Hermit follows up on a discussion by Glenn Reynolds about the lack of basic hand-skills among younger adults. Hermit blames the rise of foreign trade, which have made cheap goods so widely available that many skills that substituted the need to buy new replacement have lost their value in saving money. Hermit provides a good example of this change:
Myself, I have the ability to make over a dress, taking it apart down to its component parts and re-making it into a different dress. Back when dresses were not cheap, this was a valuable skill. Not so much anymore, when you can go down to the dollar store and buy spangly knit things off the rack. Who would pay me a couple hundred dollars to make over a dress, when for half that they could have a new one? read more ...

1 comment:

x said...

Great linkage, interesting topic, in my mind the global economy becomes your leverage. Skillset+Knowledge+Network+Experience and so on.