Hand-crafting is a luxury. Interview with Lino Guzzella

By Simone Achermann

Division of labour is essential to secure long-term prosperity. If everyone does everything, the outcome will be chaos. However, the trend towards doing it yourself is definitely useful as a meaningful leisure activity, says ETH Rector Lino Guzzella.

 

After years of life in the knowledge society, making things is becoming the ideal again. As rector of a knowledge institution, what do you say to that?

I am fairly critical of this movement, for three reasons. Firstly, the success of every modern economy and therefore of our prosperity is based on the division of labour. But as always, when a system works people forget where its success comes from – and sabotage the system. How anyone could dream of reversing the division of labour by having everyone do everything - and that’s the aim of the maker movement – I cannot comprehend. Secondly, the quality of most products is better when they’re produced industrially. Let’s take cars, for example: in terms of quality, industrial manufacturing overtook the traditional kind of “manufactory” with its large-scale, manual production in the seventies. By that time, even the most talented craftsman had no chance of achieving industrial production standard. A Rolls Royce is still partly hand-made – that’s why it’s so expensive – but from the technical point of view, it’s no better than a Golf. And thirdly, the desire to make everything yourself is a threat to social redistribution. Self-made things are far too expensive, and the result would be that the majority of people would no longer be able to afford technical aids like washing machines. Imagine if we suddenly all had to go back to doing our washing in the river. We can make better use of the time – for example, to reflect critically on social developments.

You are talking mainly about complex technical products. What about consumer goods such as clothing or toys, where perfection isn’t so important?

Making it yourself certainly makes more sense in those areas. But here, too, the trend shows that we’ve forgotten how well off we are in the technical age. Not wanting to aim for perfection is a consequence of the affluent society. We can afford to spend a lot of time on making poor quality goods. For example: if I want to build my own birdhouse, it’ll come quite expensive – I need wood, tools and several hours of time. And at the end of the day, it probably won’t do such a good job as one I could buy for twenty francs.

Does that mean you would get more pleasure out of a low-priced birdhouse off the shelf?

Maybe not. I would undoubtedly enjoy the process of making it. In that case, however, you can’t look at making it yourself from the point of view of wanting to achieve good quality at a low price. It is more of a kind of therapy in the knowledge society; happily, it’s also cheaper than ordinary psychotherapy. The maker movement is undoubtedly quite a good thing as a meaningful leisure activity.

Can we interpret the desire for self-made things as a consequence of an increasing technical complexity, of gadgets that none of us understand anymore?

It’s quite possible, because that really is a major problem. It’s in the nature of technology to increase in complexity. Even I don’t have a clue about the details of how a mobile phone works. However, it’s impossible to return to mechanical tools, which would be much more accessible to the user because they make technical processes more visible. It’s a fact of life that today’s technology works with elements you can’t see, such as electromagnetic waves. We have reached a high level of affluence, we all lead comfortable lives. The price we pay for that is division of labour and complexity. It’s a price I’m happy to pay.

So we will all have to acquire technical knowledge by self-study?

Up to a certain point yes, especially if you want to participate actively in democratic decision-making processes. After all, a prerequisite for democracy is that the individual has to be capable of taking his decisions rationally, and for that we sometimes need a certain amount of technical knowledge. However, both are needed, responsibility on the part of both the education system and the individual citizen. It is the duty of all educational institutions – from playschool to university – to give a lot of weight to the aspects of mathematics, science and technology. At the same time, every single one of us has to accept his responsibility as a citizen and acquire the knowledge he needs. We are a technology society now, not an agrarian one. It is nice to know how grain can be ground manually. However, it is more important for us to have some understanding of how our everyday technical appliances work.

Wouldn’t technology need to be made more attractive for that to happen, so that it regains the ability to amaze people?

You’re right. The sensory side of technology would be enormously important in making people to think about it. However, it is in the nature of technology that it has to keep improving its performance, and often at the expense of its sensuality – a dilemma that’s hard to resolve. The only possible approach is probably to be more committed to technical experiences. A good example is the explore-it initiative, which developed technology kits for kids about eight years ago. It’s best to start approaching supposedly unapproachable technology when you are very small.

Could 3D printers for home use, which we will soon be able to use to make our own chocolate, have a role to play here?

Possibly. However, it will only be possible to print very simple products for the next few decades at least. We will probably never be able to produce complex technology such as computers and cars at the push of a button. These 3D printers are far too slow for that. However, it may be a fun hobby for the individual, though an expensive one. Shop-bought chocolate is much less expensive and more economical in the use of resources than if we need a computer, software, electric power and materials for it. But maybe you really do get more enjoyment out of self-printed chocolate.

The maker movement sees itself as a protest against the increasing standardisation of culture caused by globalisation. What would you say to that?

Making things yourself is nice, but in many cases, as I said before, it is luxury behaviour. We really have bigger problems to solve than combating standardised affluence – world hunger, energy supplies or lack of access to clean water for billions of people, to name only a few examples. Making things yourself is fine as long as you account for it under the right heading: having fun. But it’s hardly a significant contribution to solving the pressing problems of this world.

Lino Guzzella has been Rector of ETH Zurich since 1 August 2012. ETH’s professor of thermotronics, a research field concerned with energy systems, has a special interest in project-based learning. He and his group focus their research on novel approaches to cost-efficient, environmentally friendly energy conversion systems. Lino Guzzella was born in Zurich in 1957.