Journeyman

A journeyman is a skilled worked who is in between apprentice and master. This concept delights me in a bunch of ways.

It fits my own path. I have little idea what craft I have been working to master, but clearly I have been at since I was a youth. It started in coping with my family but evolved into something broader and more professional. As a young scientist, a mentor advised me to “be multidisciplinary.” He meant within the sciences but I went much farther than that. My interests extended into architecture and industrial design, and economics, and interpersonal dynamics (sales, management, coaching and leadership).

I am also watching a sea change in our economic life during my era. skills are becoming important again as they did in the middle ages.

Agriculture organized people into lords and serfs and created a static structure. Guilds were the remedy.

Manufacturing turned into owners and workers. Unions were a remedy which caused problems as well, locking workers into new structures.

Automation is creating a new and more challenging level of wealth inequality. Will we have guilds of knowledge workers? I’m not sure we need guilds. They provided accreditation and branding in a time when you couldn’t look up the references of the journeyman who arrived in your town. Now you know them online.

I also attended the first Journey Man seminar with Kevin Billett, which was really fun.