The Price of Craft - Part 2
The Digital Combine and the Cost of Efficiency
This is the second in a series of articles on The Price of Craft. The series starts here.
The Combine didn’t arrive all at once. It grew from a long chain of abstractions — each one meant to make life easier.
We started with bytes, then built languages, frameworks and templates to simplify software development. Each layer lifted us one step higher, letting us do more with less. I spent years building those layers. Systems that wrote code. Frameworks that absorbed complexity. That’s been the throughline of my work as an engineer — building systems that absorb complexity so others don’t have to.
Even Agile is an abstraction - roles, rituals, and structure designed to tame creative chaos.
The Combine — a vast AI system spread across thousands of machines, guided by data and free from hesitation or doubt — is just the next step. It turns intention into execution. The human says "what," and the system handles the "how."
It’s fast. Precise. Scalable.
But it does not care.
It does not wonder. It does not flinch. It does not love the problem or hate the workaround. It does not risk anything. It is a machine of data and logic, forever indifferent.
It simply functions, flawless and hollow.
The Combine can create almost anything — except meaning.
And that’s the cost. The Combine cannot have a beginner's mind. Its data-driven knowledge lacks the curiosity and risk that craft's soul demands.
Because while soul doesn’t scale, neither does indifference. If everything becomes frictionless, then nothing feels earned. And when nothing feels earned, nothing feels like yours.
Craft was never efficient - nor meant to be. Its soul, the price we pay, makes us matter through the making.
[Continued in Part 3: Craft as Resistance and Meaning]