“Storebought is Fine”...but Handcrafted is Treasured

Why Artificial Intelligence can’t compete with my Homemade Felt Bear and Why the Addicted Generation loves Yarn so much

When I stabbed myself with the sewing needle the fourth time, I started to question the motivation behind doing this. I ripped out the tufts of fur that made up my felt bear’s nose to re-do it from scratch again - and somehow ended up with the same nose for a third time.  

What is it that makes someone decide to create a home-made gift? What makes someone else appreciate it (or not)? 

Why does a ‘Born with the Like button in their hand,’ screen-addicted, dopamine-nation generation love yarn so much? 

Ultimately, I managed to create a bear with asymmetrical and mismatched toe pads that would definitely fail a DUI test if pulled over by some mythical forest creature law enforcement.

Other felt bears would only date him for his sense of humor and personality. 

But my partner loved it.

Along for the ride

Trying to solve the equation behind what makes these handcrafted and, in my case, badly handcrafted gifts, so treasured above storebought ones, has been in the back of my head the last few weeks. 

The variables involved seem to be mainly intangible - time + sweat + effort - which made me think a lot about how we’re probably seriously misperceiving and overestimating the value of Artificial Intelligence. 

The DIY Industry will be an almost trillion-dollar industry in 2024 and is expected to grow about 10% per year for the next five years. To compare it very unfairly to the Industry of the Moment, Artificial Intelligence, that is ~5X the current size of the Global AI industry (.89 Trillion vs. .17 Trillion). 

I find that comforting. In a world where every Headline and LinkedIn post is about robots taking our jobs, it makes me think that maybe just maybe the scale of AI deposing humans is overhyped and there is significant, unspoken of intangible value to human-created items that the market is not capturing. 

That maybe my felt bear and his yarn brethren are leading a revolt against mechanization and the default assumption underlying our society that convenience is always better than effort. 

My sense of accomplishment with completing this Beauty Pageant Participation Trophy bear could compete with even the biggest work accomplishments I’ve had. 

Speaking for others, the people who most epitomize buying your values “off the shelf” (e.g., believe advertising maxims that hustling for more money and status will lead to more stuff and happiness) seem to project valuing these artisan, bespoke, handcrafted objects the most.

I’ve definitely had this sort of Madlibs-version of a Dinner Party conversation several times about an artisan object the host recently acquired:

…. NOUN Caravan of NOUN, PLURAL Indigenous Descended Women who every week create a new NOUN, OBJECT Mandala with NOUN, PLURAL Bottle Caps…

With all the attention on how volatile cryptocurrency is, humans have this intense buy-in to objects purchased with sweat and time from our loved ones—and even strangers whose stories we love—that are never examined.

As machines become increasingly more powerful and error-proof, as more things are made on a factory line or by robots or by AI - maybe even flaws work according to the laws of economics and become much more valuable because of their scarcity. 

Gifts made with obvious human “tells” and flaws are sometimes valued more highly even than those handmade objects made flawlessly with the dividends of time and effort spent acquiring a skillset. Like how you will value your niece’s popsicle stick ornament more than a professional artist/friend’s glass-blown one - which, if it’s just an equation of valuing sweat, time, and equity, the latter with a greater cumulative total should be much more highly valued.

Maybe because it starts to be mistaken for a factory or machine creation, it becomes less valuable, like a reverse Turing test. 

So maybe there’s another intangible variable at play here in handcrafted items - like time + sweat + effort + courage. You took a risk being vulnerable and showing your hand you aren’t perfect. You went outside your comfort zone to learn something new that I might like. 

This valuing system has an environmental impact when you look at fast fashion and single-use, disposable items. Artisan and DIY's definition seems to be about the individual creator - and that only one individual human makes it.  

When it’s in a factory, and many different hands touch it, it belongs to no one. Many hands turn the cranks, but it is more disposable if no one can look at the object, take pride in it, and feel ownership of it. This is also true of AI - when you generate output from so many different inputs - it’s like a factory item with no owner and no one who can truly take pride in it (legally, it also can’t have a copyright). 

I think building is somewhat central to our DNA and our being alive. The other day I saw a perfect right-triangle hypotenuse of spider silk leading from the lemon tree in the backyard to the hot tub. 

I pictured a spider leaping from the lemon tree leaf with perfect faith and pulling the string taut later. Spiders weave and craft constantly, knowing anytime they can climb back onto their creation, it will be so strong it will carry their weight across—imagine knowing that even if the wind blows, what you built will hold your own weight.

Then I picture myself at the height of COVID-19, looking at Excel on a computer screen under indoor lights for hours. The only thing I created that day would be an email TLDR memo. I would listen to ads in the background of my podcast and order food to be delivered from another screen.

All the while, this spider is spinning in the dark of the moonlight and gorging itself on food that is wriggling and alive. 

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