The title of this post comes from Robert Penn’s homage to two wheels: It’s All About The Bike.

It struck a chord with me. “I want Craft, not Technology”. Isn’t technology just a tool to make things easier? Isn’t it just an enabler of other, real, tangible things?

And yet, there is craft in technology. Like other craftsmen, developers bring their experiences, their personalities and their passions to bear. At least the good ones do.

As a consultant technologist, I spent a lot of time talking to people who wanted the cheapest possible technology to facilitate their aims. Is this wrong? More and more tools are appearing that cater to this desire and allow anyone to create an app, website or blog and instinctively that feels like a good thing.

I wonder how useful these cheap technology solutions are to people. If they allow someone to get their amazing content out into the world or to raise money for a great cause then it really does feel like a good thing. However, we also know that great content is more likely to find an audience if it is presented well. And we know that a web product is more likely to succeed if skilled designers and developers have crafted it to meet the exact needs of its users.

So where does craft fit in? How do we know whether a given problem should be solved by cheap facilitation or beautiful craftsmanship? Is it even our choice to make?