Michael Millar (2013) reports that as modern technology becomes able to produce almost everything better than traditional production methods, from clothing to rugs to train travel, the increasing relative costs are forcing providers of traditionally produced goods to market ever more exclusively to more wealthy clients, and to claim special qualities for their costly, labour intensive products.
But are those special qualities really so special? Are they even real? One example that Millar discusses is the making of men's suits, where computer driven machines can cut fabric, assemble pieces and sew them together far more quickly and accurately than any human producers. In response, Millar reports that James Sleater, who has just opened a bespoke men's tailor shop in London's prestigious Savile Row, argues that human tailoring can still beat machine tailoring in, for example, measuring customers because he can "ask people to relax then their waistlines" (Reminiscent of yesteryear sect., 2013). But I think Sleater is wrong. It would be a simple matter for a computer scan to ask the customer to do exactly the same thing, and since the customer is alone, with no other human around to feel embarrassed in front of, even more likely to be successful. Sorry, Mr. Slaeter, but I think the machines win again.
This article also seems to me to bring up forcefully the question of what it is exactly that we do value in tradition, and whether that makes any sense. In the Rug for Obama section, Millar compares machine made rugs with traditionally hand woven Nepalese rugs, where Luke Irwin claims that his human made rugs are better because "the customer gets exactly what they want", and that "you can tell every time which is machine-made" (2013). Again, I'm not sure that either of these claims by the traditional producer is even true: I'm pretty sure that a computer could control a machine to introduce exactly the same sort of variations that inevitably occur with human rug making - who traditionally aimed to eliminate all such variation. And the even bolder claim, that human production gives customers "exactly what they want" seems even less likely to be true. In one sentence, Mr Irwin claims that humans are better than machines because humans are less accurate, and in the next he is claiming that humans are better able to deliver exactly what is asked for: he appears to be contradicting himself. I am sure his claim that the machines run by computers are more accurate than human beings is the correct one, and this will only become more true as technology rapidly improves. Even more, it is becoming increasingly feasible for customers any where in the world to design exactly what they want: the colours, the size, the design and so on, and for machines run by computers to create exactly that one-off product for that one customer.
So, if machine made goods are every bit as good as, or much better than, human made goods, does it even make sense to pay more for the lower quality human made goods just because they are made by human beings?
I do think that being made by a human can add value to something. On my walls, I like to hang artwork by my young nieces and nephews, and by the six-year old son of a Thai friend. These pieces are of dubious artistic worth, but their value is in the time and effort that someone put into creating them to give to me. Similarly, I appreciate the meals my mother cooks on my visits to Australia not because she is a great cook (she never was) but because of the thought and effort that she puts into doing it for me. In return, she appreciates the fact that I take her and my brothers and sisters out to nice restaurants.
But I'm less sure that a lower quality hand made rug is worth more than a higher quality machine made rug. And I'm very sure that I prefer my BTS carriages to be precision made by machine rather than roughly thrown together by hand.
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I hope no one else was thinking of blogging in response to this particular article, which I've now used for my weekend blog response writing homework.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few other stories in the BBC News today that caught my interest, but this one seemed more fun than "Suicide, murder and the courts" or "Right-to-die campaigners Nicklinson and Lamb lose battle", both of which also raise issues that interest me. Perhaps someone else will like to blog them?
But there are plenty of other stories to choose from at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/.
I guess some people seems to have bias against machine.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post make me think of one of my friend who is a skillful illustrator. His work looks like watercolor painting but he actually paints it on computer. The reason he does this is if he paint on paper, he has to scan it on computer anyway when he send to the publisher and client since all artwork is done on computer this day, and the quality of the picture will drop in the scan process. Paint on computer is the best way to control the quality especially if the work have to be enlarge to large scale media such as billboard. However, many client ask him to hand-painted (on paper), but when he told them all his works were hand-painted on computer, they cannot except it (even though they cannot tell the difference!).
My,
DeleteThank you for sharing the odd experience of your friend. I thought everyone now did everything on computers, except art created to be art. I'm not very good at either. I have the Adobe Photoshop program on my computer, but I really can't use it. I'm pretty good with MS Word, Excel and even Access, but I've never learnt to use graphics programs.
I was pleased that I could get both my introduction to and the summary of my source into one sentence each.
ReplyDeleteThe response to that source is a bit longer, but that's what we expect.
It reminds me of the documentary name How's it make? on discovery channel, it also on Youtube. It's about factories made and produce their products on manufactured scale which are very interesting. There are variety of products that you never know how's it made and sometimes after you watched it, you never what to eat, use, or drink it ever again. For example, how to make Coca Cola, even though processing of making it was very interested; however, the amount of sugar and the artificial flavor that contains in this drink can make you easily fat.
ReplyDeleteThank you Ploy. I haven't seen that show, which is not surprising since I never watch TV, but it reminds me of books I loved as a child about how everyday things were made and how they worked. It was, as you say, very interesting.
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