Monday 22 August 2011

Pencil making

From I, Pencil:
Millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field.

10 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. The miner could be dispensed with, if something substitutes for graphite, and the logger, if foreign wood is used. The president of the pencil company is a bit different. He could be replaced, of course. But the company cannot substitute a different input for a president. Or could a committee of lower executives substitute?

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  3. I think that millions is an underestimate. If you draw this out to its logical conclusion the creation of this particular pencil required the help of many billion humans and also the ancestors of our own species. The author certainly didn't "go too far."

    Aside from this philosophical observation, I think its important to point out that this passage is from the point of view of the product. Sure, the miner and logger may not be dispensed with in the production of a wooden pencil, but what about other writing instruments? The president of the company may only contribute a small bit of know-how to this process, but he should also be spending his time looking towards the future of his firm and industry.

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  4. I believe that even though the number of people who contributes is very huge, different people do take up different amount of know-how. And some of them are less dispensable than the others.

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  5. This is a great example of how something we take for granted, and consider so minute really sustains the human race. We couldn't perform most of our day to day activities without a writing instrument, the pencil epitomizing that instrument. Furthermore, this blog really shows that the pencil is a mere piece of wood bonded to graphite, but it is the people who use it to create, collaborate, and produce.

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  6. Sumner makes a good point that people who lived in the past and contributed to know-how were essential to the Pencil too. We should be grateful to whoever invented writing, for instance!

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  7. Every worker has unique skills that add value to the functioning of the industry. Without each individual’s contribution, the process would fail.

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  8. Personally I think all objective things can be substituted one day. But everything exists for a reason. The abstract meaning of getting objective things together lasts forever. In this case, the pencil may be made of different raw materials and with updated processes. But we invent it to record and communicate what we think. It never changes. Thinkers are more difficult to be dispensed.

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  9. Touching on what some of the previous posts have mentioned, I think it's really interesting that as some of the jobs or know-how's become obsolete, other know-hows are established to more or less replace them. Even if a certain know-how is automated, for example, that specific technology might still someone with the know-how to maintain and repair it. However, I was trying to think of what cases (if any) might have a job that's become irrelevant without one that takes its place?

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  10. I thought it was interesting that even as our pencil evolves, and some know-hows become irrelevant, others are created in their place. Even if the task becomes automated, people are still needed with knowledge on how to maintain and repair the equipment. I wonder if there are any know-hows that maybe weren't replaced by or evolved into another know-how?

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