The Discovery Channel’s Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs fame, gave a talk in Silicon Valley on the merits of getting one’s hands dirty. You’ll need to start at 15 minutes, 52 seconds:
The whole thing is fascinating (and makes me wish I had a better education in the classics).
Maybe the unintended consequence of the rise of Knowledge Work is that is an increased interest in doing it yourself (see MakeUseOf, Instructables, eHow, DIY Life, and Lifehacker)?
This isn’t just the end user using Prosumer tools to edit photos and videos or creating their own video games. How many people who work with ideas are also building their own gadgets, brewing their own beer, tackling household projects, cooking and canning, tinkering with cars, tending a productive garden, raising chickens, or doing some other “dirty job”, not as a source of employment but as a source of enjoyment?
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