The Workmanship of Certainty

The workmanship of certainty is Pye's name for making in which quality is determined before production begins, by the design of the apparatus that will execute the work. The factory press stamps identical shapes regardless of operator. The injection mold produces the same plastic form whether the hand that loads it is master or novice. The outcome does not depend on continuous human judgment; it depends on the quality of the setup. Pye described this with extraordinary prescience: all this judgment, dexterity and care has been concentrated and stored up before the actual production starts. Once it does start, the stored up capital is drawn on and the output comes pouring out in an absolutely predetermined form. He was writing about jigs. He was describing large language models.