Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Dublin Core

Title

Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Description

Shop Class as Soulcraft argues that manual, skilled work (like fixing motorcycles) is intellectually rich and essential to human flourishing. Crawford is critical of the shift in modern work toward abstraction, and the separation of thinking from doing. In his view, deep satisfaction and important forms of knowledge come from engaging with the material world, exercising judgment, and seeing the tangible results of one’s labor.

This perspective is increasingly relevant in the context of AI, which accelerates the delegation of both white- and blue-collar tasks to inscrutable software systems. As AI takes over more cognitive work (analysis, writing, creativity, decision-making) as well as physical tasks, human beings are distanced not only from the work itself but from the embodied knowledge that such work develops and sustains. In other words, AI makes us dumber the more we use it.

Crawford’s emphasis on the unity of mind and body in skilled labor challenges the idea that intelligence can be cleanly separated from action. When AI assumes more of our planning, problem-solving, and perception, we risk dislocating ourselves from the very processes that build competence and agency. The more we outsource, the less we engage in feedback loops between thinking and doing. This atrophy of judgment, attention, and intuition may erode our sense of identity, responsibility, and satisfaction in work.

Creator

Matthew Crawford

Source

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301618/shop-class-as-soulcraft-by-matthew-b-crawford/

Publisher

Penguin Books

Date

2009

Contributor

Justin L. from Bellingham, WA