The Competence Crisis That Wasn't
Why we insist on mourning skills we never wanted to keep
In 1907, lamplighters in New York walked off the job, leaving 25,000 gas lamps dark. In Belgium, their counterparts took a more direct approach: they smashed the new electric bulbs. Picture grown men in the dark, swinging at glass, protecting the sacred art of making fire happen from a technology that made fire irrelevant.
They knew, with the certainty o…
