That the ubiquity of technology determines today's modern life is an undeniable and self-evident fact. Nonetheless, technology is not just an element in human history, but it is nowadays the subject of History, where we, as human beings, have become a co-historical subject of technology, an appendix. This is one of the symptoms pointed out by Gunther Anders when analyzing the conditions of human life, or better, the obsolescence of it, in the third industrial revolution. He is aware that claiming such “discovery” about the inversion of roles in History is not an exclusive matter of philosophy, identifying some «vulgar prophets of our end-times, who have stolen a march on philosophers by several decades» and that «had long ago recognized this change of subject as a fait accompli and transformed its presentation into words and images as a profitable commodity» (Anders, 1980, p.259). With these words, Anders is referring to the authors of science fiction narratives, a genre that in our contemporary collective imagination is equally ubiquitous. Surely, fictional themes have been present since the creation of entertainment media, but since the last decades of the XX, characterized by the post-war climate, there has been a rush for the production of the newest, latest, and most innovative utopian/dystopian stories for our screen entertainment. What is so appealing about these narratives that keep moving masses—of people and resources— towards the detached experience of improbable worlds, events, and characters? The answer could be close to the sentiment described by Lucretius in his De Rerum Natura when saying: «Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem... » (It is pleasant when on the vast sea the winds are stirring up the water, to look at the great misfortune of another person from the land...). The debate of considering such attitude as ethical or unethical has been a matter for secular philosophical diatribes, and it is not relevant on this occasion, the fact is that we, as spectators of the shipwreck (or more appropriately, of the space-shipwreck), feel pleasantly safe
in our couches watching the far away disaventures in our screens. But nothing more wrong with this delusional feeling, because the shipwreck that Anders described has long ago started, and
yes, we are all in it.

The third industrial revolution analyzed by Anders started its course only when «the principle of “machinery” began to be iterated; that is, by producing machines, or at least parts of machines, by ways of machines.» A sharp statement from Anders is that for the fourth internal revolution, the world is certainly overmanned. In the capitalist enterprise rationalization is an essential requirement for the optimization of industrial production, and humans are not an exception to this rule: «as few workers as possible will be indispensable» which has led to the constant decline of the worker's quotient —the percentage of the workers necessary to provide for the needs of one hundred workers— in highly industrialized countries (Anders, 1980, p.20). With the rationalization of the man-work force, we are facing the «liquidation of humans as homines fabros», which “simply” means more unemployed people. With these concrete statements, we can begin to feel the closeness and familiarity of the shipwreck, and at this point,
the industrial revolution encounters a first contradiction. On one hand, it is crucial to employ as few workers as possible for the optimization of the means of production, and on the other hand, more unemployed individuals lead to a group of people with less purchasing power; this means that the surplus production becomes higher the more the unemployment rates increase. There is surplus production, an overabundance of supply, when human beings are not able to use/consume everything that is created and offered by the industry, therefore the destruction of such excess becomes an indispensable procedure to keep moving the machinery. This phenomenon is what Anders defined as the Promethean disjunction. Not only do we produce more than we can imagine and even use, but today, we produce more than we can need: «The maximum that we can produce and the maximum (shamefully small) that we can need».
Certainly one can not judge what it is to be considered as an outright need since our parameters for a worthy life are volatile and even capricious—say it with Marx «The nature of such wants,
whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference»—, but what is accurate about the capitalist industry is that it produces in first instance the commodity, and then it is up to us to find the need it would satisfy, therefore, the legitimated need is to find a matching need for the RTW (Ready to Wear) item. Surrounded by an overflow of products ready to be used, it is our task, through our acts of consumption, to carry out the short-life sentence of the commodities. We must conclude the destiny of depletion and replacement of the up-to-date objects/services, a role that sets us in a passive position towards the industrial enterprise. Convinced of fulfilling urgent needs, human beings become emptied vessels to be filled with the latest item, need, or idea, and capitalism has made sure that the void of pleasures is manifested in both directions: as a voracious appetite towards what can be consumed —what we can get—, and an idle input of what one can do —what we can give—. Anders identifies eloquently this
“Hellish” existence when a person is deprived of the voluptas laborandi, the satisfaction of being
able to provide for oneself through their work, which he defines as «one of the most powerful,
important and highly esteemed pleasures», and if prevented from it, the libidinal energy would
look for alternative ways of contentment, leaving it at the will of today's superficial pleasures.
Once more, I guess the shipwreck proves to be a present-day event. The statistical data of unemployment rates can be a mathematical shape of the phenomenon, the content of it is the delusional myth bought by the inhabitants of industrialized countries with the conviction that automated work has set humans free from their needs. We are far from freedom when the gloom of compulsory free time hunts our esteem. We are far from freedom when we do not know how to satisfy our basic needs. Today, with more than half of the global population living in the cities, the adopted urban infrastructure and lifestyle prevents us from even understanding how to provide for our most basic necessities, like food security —having nutritious and affordable food— or protecting our bodies from the external environmental conditions —shelters and clothing—. This doesn’t mean that every person should be able to make their own clothes, houses, crops, water sources, etc... But within the hermetic asphalt bubble, the industry has set vast distances between the proceedance and the “final '' user of a product. The magnitude of the established distance is of behemothic dimensions that it arrives at the invisibilization of the
processes. We are not only ignorant of the reasons for our habits of consumption, but we wouldn’t even know how such commodities are produced. Capitalism invisibilizes, or better, is not capable of understanding the value it produces, and so, neither are we. Therefore, destruction through obsolescence is a suitable way to clear the path for the upcoming products, an act we are thrilled and willing to carry out as we do not find in these products other values besides the up-to-date function —which tends to be translated into price—. At this point, it is clear that
estimations of value and price are not correlative.
In the industrial process, between the act of producing and the product, there is a third thing, a residuum, which is the objective being of desire. Desire is a unit and a machine of production from which our needs excogitate, giving as a counter effect «lack» (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972, p.26-27). But as Anders pointed out, today we are no longer needy beings, animalia indigentia,
today our finitude lies in the fact that we need too little: in our lack of poverty (Anders, 1980, p.13). For Deleuze and Guattari this lack of needs translates, in terms of desire, as the abject fear of lacking something. Our desire becomes a desire to produce within the realm of the real, where everything is possible and feasible, and in this process of production what is missing is, evidently, not more things we fear to lack of, but «rather the objectivity of man, the objective being of man». It is within this rush spirit in which today we are immersed, enlisted as mass «raw material» for the production of an overwhelming quantity of “contents” for “feeds”, that objective questions for the things to «be» in the realm are forgotten, like why was such thing made for? This can be one of the subject matters that can be raised when dealing with a crafted commodity. Could artisanship open a slot where one can not «act as if the guiding principle of your action could be that of the machine, a part of which you are or will be»?(Anders, 1980, p.268). Far from intending to give a fixed “meaning” to the things we use, it could be that when looking into ancient/traditional techniques for making and providing goods, the fatigue of labor
and resources becomes disclosed.

It has been outlined how quantity is an imperative requirement for industrial production, with which, naturally, craftsmanship production cannot compete; but there is also another
relevant characteristic that defines the value/price of a good: its quality. In the presentation sheet of an offered commodity, the section designated to the reviews made by the users is nowadays a must information that leads to the decision of an acquaintance. In industrial production, where every and anything is allowed to exist just as a copy of, as a clone, as an «a», one would judge the homogeneity, consistency, and uniformity as positive and essential requirements for a product/service, but we should be aware that our consumption habits have been trained in the industrial revolution, therefore the parameters for judging something as “good” or “bad” cannot be equally applied when dealing with a craftsmanship product. Starting from the provenance of the raw material of a craft which —traditionally— comes from a natural source —vegetal or animal—such fiber materials cannot assure a homogeneity of a series of products. From the initial phases carried out for obtaining the natural fibers, meaning the moments of sowing, growing, and harvesting, the variables of the process are amenable to fluctuating events. This means that the characteristics of a fiber are tightly dependent on the environmental conditions of the specific territory. For example, materials obtained from animal species, like wool, silk, or leather are going to depend on factors such as the nutrition, health, and life conditions of the animal; for the obtainment of vegetable fibers like cotton, wood, linen, rubber, palm fibers, etc, the minerals in the soil, sun exposure, weather conditions, water supply, animal and human interactions are some of the facts that will determine the characteristics of the material. After the recollection procedure, it would be necessary to transform the raw material into consistent modules or surfaces through spinning, combing, tanning, or cutting processes, so these will furthermore be manufactured or assembled for the creation of a final product. If the item is
intended to be colored then it would be necessary to add an extra step for dying of the yarns, strings, skins, or textiles, which correspondingly would mean an analogous process for the extraction and application of the desired pigment. Just at this stage, the artisan would be able to
start the manufacturing of the envisioned item. It is possible to understand why such an “unreliable” and long process is not compatible with parameters of quality based on a cloning system. Even with the greatest and maniacal attention for controlling every variable situation, the outcoming products will never be copies of one another; they sure can be similar, but not
identical twins.

The other variable factor that determines the outcome of a crafted product is precisely the person who carried out the process of manufacture, therefore, the conditions of the «infrastructure» necessary for the production—the mind, body, and tools— are imperative for thefeatures of the production. The experience, mood, knowledge, calmness or stress, thoughts, intentions, social and cultural context... All of these are likewise conditions that will make one product different from another; human conditions that certainly, as the environmental ones, slip from a predictable control. To carry out a process of creation one must possess and practice a specific know-how. Usually, in traditional and/or indigenous communities this kind of knowledge and wisdom is not preserved or documented in the common Western ways of archiving, like books or recordings, but for such societies, the intellectual heritage is transmitted from generation to generation through empirical and oral customs. Far from Western structures characterized by sectorized subjects, spaces, and schedules, learning in traditional communities means grasping and being affected—touched/interested—directly from the practice and experience of the elders. Their wisdom of making with hands, heart, and mind, puts them closer to the origin of the word techne (τέχνη) coined from Ancient Greek and used to denote the practical application of knowledge; «techne» is the application of intellectual and practical skills into a process of creation. The educational system diffused in Western societies—meaning the circumstances where one can acquire the skills that would be useful for the individual’s life—divides categorically intellectual from practical skills, establishing clear-cut spaces and periods dedicated to the transmission of isolated information. We will have irremovable schedules that set the hours we will spend learning about social sciences, biology, mathematics, geography, languages, history, etc, but these fields will remain stagnant lakes of information that do not link with each other. Further on educational schemes will predilect an approach ofhyper-specialization, alienating human fields of knowledge and thus estranging labor from life.How does the accumulation of detached information influence or explain our daily and currentsituations? Nowadays the attitude towards the up-to-date services and products is that ofindifference coming from taking for granted what we use/consume. How our clothes are made,how water arrives at our taps, how food arrives at our tables, how energy moves our cars, lights or warms our homes, or how this extended communication is possible? are just a few basic questions that reveal the not-know-how of our current society. Industry invisibilized its processes, or as Anders would define it, its appearance is not close to reliability. In the massive offer of industry it is difficult, and even negligible, to identify the different raw materials things are made of, or in a wider picture, their genesis. As consumers/users we are even prevented from the curiosity of such inquiries, doubts are easily “solved” in homogenized and opaque replies, and the production processes are gargantuan mysteries that we are incapable of comprehending. Thisnot-know-how places us at the opposite pole of freedom, as we become completely dependent on the opaque system of industry, not understanding the processes for fulfilling our needs/desires.

In industrial production goods are offered in pre-packaged collections, condemned to exist as an «a» inside the “collectible” frame. Today's collections are based on the logic of the ephemeral, on “innovations'' of transitory trends, and «a» piece bought from a certain collection in the streets of Milan should have its exact corresponding clone in the streets of New York; it would be scandalous and unacceptable not being able to find the same product of an “exclusive” brand in any city of the Western society. When consuming «a» product from this voracious industry—which furthermore legitimizes its random and speculative prices on the same logic of the temporary preservation of a “status” when being used, therefore, on its cost of accelerated discard—the global “taste” becomes utterly homogenized, creating a mass of uniformed consumers under a promise of authenticity and exclusivity. On an alternative existence of a good as an «a», there is the creation of «the» product manufactured by the craftsmanship and artisanship techniques. In a traditional handcrafted production, one would create «the» dress, «the» hat, «the» cup, «the» bag, «the» basket... for oneself or someone else. Tradition does not respond to the dynamics of fugacious innovation, but primarily, it would conserve and transmit the useful factors for future production, based on human time and capacity of production. Applying the concept of seasonal collections to craftsmanship results in an absurd parameter to
measure or organize its production, also taking into account that the time scanned by the seasonality in the industry takes into consideration just one latitude of the world, ignoring the
fact that in many other geographies, climate does not follow those patterns—a beautiful example is the calendar of the Múrui Muina people in Amazonia whose calendar is regulated by a deep knowledge about the surrounding nature, mainly dependant on the water cycle—.

Given the conditions and characteristics that define the creation of a crafted product, many of its aspects are to be considered defects in industrial production; it is not a clone endowed with ubiquity, the time required for its production is not instantaneous or accelerated, the human and natural resources require investments of human labor, it carries a cultural heritage, and therefore, it is a valuable item that rarely would be deliberately trashed for an "updated" one. Does it make sense to embrace the “defects'' of artisanship production? Not as an apology or a romanticization of hand-made production, or for the DIY pastimes—it would be equally absurd to advocate for “going back to better times''—but might be that asking ourselves about the «value» of our everyday objects—where, how, why, when and by whom are they made—gives us some moments of rest and consideration of our pace of consumption/destruction. Considering the provenance and creation of our commodities, as factors tightly connected to other beings' existence, could set a ground for gratefulness and not taking for granted what is given, either by nature or industry. An integral view of our habits of consumption for the fulfillment of our needs on this planet could be a step —backward—in taking distances from the spectator of the shipwreck perspective; considering every facet of human life and knowledge as intrinsically interwoven with each other could be a call of resign for the position of watchmen of the industrial technology for massive production.