[agentultra]

First, creating power tools didn’t cause mass layoffs of carpenters and construction workers. There continued to be a demand for skilled workers.

Second, power tools work with the user’s intent. The user does the planning, the measuring, the cutting and all the activities of building. They might choose to use a dovetail saw instead of fasteners to make a joint.

Third, programming languages are specifications given to a compiler to generate more code. A single programmer can scale to many more customers than a labourer using tools.

The classification of centaur vs reverse-centaur tools came to me by way of Corey Doctorow.

There might be ways to use the technology that doesn’t make us into reverse centaurs but we haven’t discovered that yet. What we have in its current form isn’t a tool.

[kcexn]

Did power tools not cause layoffs? That seems like a dubious claim to me. Building a house today takes far fewer people than 100 years ago. Seems unlikely that all the extra labor found other things to do in construction.