[LichenStone]

> Anyone who lived in or visited a third world country and watched people produce works of astounding precision and perfect finish with their bare hands will understand that in the 1st world we are just not very capable with our hands since the industrial revolution.

This is too true. I realised this in the last few years after getting into wood carving and deciding to learn how to sharpen a blade properly. You don't need some fancy contraption or machine to put a good edge on a knife or other cutting tool, using just my hands and eyes with a few small stones I can put a consistent razor edge on just about anything. It's shocking to me how common it is for people to have dull or completely blunt chefs knives in their kitchen, freehand sharpening is a basic skill that I think 90% have the dexterity and capability to learn, but proper hand skills just aren't a priority anymore.

A lot of still quite relevant traditional building methods are being overlooked or forgotten too, a relative who does slate roofing and various other work for housing in the UK often expresses dismay at the state of building education and common practices.

I have a hope that eventually hand skills for maniplation of objects in 3D space might once again become something of a priority, with some kind of future haptic technology. See Bret Victor's excellent Humane Representation of Thought talk - http://worrydream.com/cdg/ResearchAgenda-v0.19-poster.pdf He doesn't know exactly how such technology could be made exactly, just that it probably will one day and we should think about designing software and interfaces to build towards that.