A Crafter's Manifesto Human handling and manipulating of materials and the tools that work them, as well as making and testing your own prototypes, ensures that nothing gets lost or diluted in the translation from thought to thing. Managing this torrent in a way that avoids serious insult to society and the rest of nature is proving to be difficult. Fuller also recommended that we consider our proposals comprehensively, anticipating the long future in all we do, always integrating our know-how with good science and deep wisdom. You might think that this is obvious, but apparently it isn't. Had thousands of computer programmers and designers comprehensively anticipated the future, we wouldn't have those pesky and fearsome prognostications of Y2K disaster coming at us.
Comprehensive thinkers attend the connections.
Electronic tools evolve very quickly to become ever more useful. Hand tools evolve more slowly, but evolve they do, as experience continues to accumulate. Specialty tool catalogs are getting fatter by the month. See, for instance, the implements of surgery and dentistry offered to model makers, antique-restorers, and electronic experimenters. The astonishing number of tool catalogs available since the first Whole Earth Catalog is proof that the rise of virtual tools has ignited a similar boom in analog action.