Another excellent article, Harold. Brings to mind an article Jim McGee wrote many years ago on "Knowledge Work as Craft." I know these are ideas that you have been thinking about for quite a while, as have I, and the article pulls a lot of those ideas together into a coherent whole.

Gilbert, if you haven't read Seth Godin's latest, Linchpin, I recommend you check it out. In that book, he addresses basically the issue you bring up, the question of "factory workers" (exemplified in the programming jobs you mention) vs. artists.