ch carried excellent benefits. He was, by all visible accounts, living the high life. Yet he was far from fulfilled, both professionally and personally, as he just couldn't see what function or purpose his work was having. This "knowledge work" of a purely intellectual bent dealt with a product which was a purely abstract entity, and of a nature he deemed as largely illegitimate for its solely conceptual, information substance. Soon afterwards, he became a motorcycle mechanic and today owns his own bike shop where he does not only what he loves to do, but performs work that he feels is far more fulfilling intrinsically--both at a operational and intellectual level.The transition of our world from a world of the physical--first an agrarian and then an industrial society--to a world where work is done through purely informational transactions means that proficiency standards are often undefined. Contrarily, the tradesmen, a person who works manually with his or her hands with a physical substance as product must conform to the standards which the object itself demands (i.e., the car starts or it doesn't, light switches turn on or not at all, a toilet flushes or remains stopped up, etc.). Crawford knows his subject, or rather both his subjects, very well; both through long experience and intellectual understanding. He not only touches on the intricate attributes of manual work as a physical activity with mental attributes, but approaches it from a philosopher's mindset, deconstructing the parameters involved in the process of fixing a carburetor on a bike, paying close attention to the cognitive processes and acquired skill needed for successful application. Conversely, he diagrams the approach to the action of writing a research paper abstract, how multiple variables make for an inexact interpretation of what's acceptable and what's not. All in all this book is a very intriguing read, thought provoking on more than one level. (331 CRAWFORD)
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