I spent this weekend reading "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder.
An interesting study of the process a team in the late 70's went through to
produce a state-of-the-art computer for Data General.  Toward the end of
the book was an interesting perspective on craftsmanship.

"In The Nature of Gothic, John Ruskin decries the tendency of the
industrial age to fragment work into tasks so trivial that they are fit to
be performed only by the equivelent of slave labour....  In the gothic
cathedrals of Europe, Ruskin believes, you can see the glorious fruits of
free labour, given freely.  What is usually meant by craftsmanship is the
production of things of high quality; Ruskin makes the crucial point that a
thing may also be judged acording to the conditions under which it was
built.

Presumably, the stonemasons who raised the cathedrals worked only partly
for their pay.  They were building temples to God.  It was the sort of work
that gave meaning to life."

Now, who cares about those mass produced nails?  Food for thought.

- Pam