Is the Last hand-made Book the Antithesis to Technology?
Arion Press is one of the hidden gems of San Francisco. As a book lover, I am embarrassed that I only discovered it (thanks to Nick Basbanes) after living in the Bay Area for eight years! Mentioned in the book 111 Places In San Francisco That You Must Not Miss by Floriana Peterson, Arion Press is the last printing facility in the US where books are made from start to finish — from the type to the binding — by hand under one roof. Arion’s historic production facility includes a letterpress print shop with a one-of-a-kind collection of historic metal typefaces, the foundry of Mackenzie & Harris (M&H) that has continuously operated for over 100 years, and a complete hand book bindery, all housed in a 14,000 square foot industrial building in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park. The Press is designated an “irreplaceable cultural treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. I was fortunate to get a personalized tour and talk to some of the people who worked in the press.
Arion Press pairs great artists with great literature to create beautiful books by hand. The entire experience seems like the antithesis to technology. But is it? Technology is defined as “a discourse or treatise on an art or the arts”. The root of the word technology comes from the Greek word techne which means art, craft or skill. Seeing a letter-press machine at work, as we did on our visit to Arion Press in San Francisco, makes the word come alive. Running since the 1940s the presses are an engineering feat and a marvel of human ingenuity.
It used to be that everyone working with technology was a technologist in the sense of being a craftsperson. Every member of the Apple Macintosh team was picked specifically because they were artists and craftspeople. Steve Jobs hired people “who know technology at the tips of their fingers and wanted to bring it to millions of people”. Jobs even encouraged them to think of themselves as artists and sign their work. It used to be that technologists knew what they were making and why.
By comparison today’s engineer knows only his narrow slice of code. The machine is too intricate for any one person to fully grasp. The entire gargantuan complex chugs along because every person down the line does their part and passes their work on to the next. The technologist has become the assembly line worker, focused only on the throughput of his part.
What does it do to engineers to lose their connection with the larger purpose of their work?
We (Rana Chakrabarty and me) visited Arion Press to seek some answers to this question. Every bookmaker we met had worked there for 10 years or more — the current typecaster had taken over from a person who had worked in the Foundry for 65 years. When asked why he did this day in day out he answered simply, “Oh, I enjoy it. I also do this in my spare time.” Chris Godek, a veteran typecaster in the foundry replied: “I enjoy the craftsmanship aspect and keeping a craft alive”. Rochelle Youk, the Bindery Manager responded: “I enjoy repetitive manual labor”.
These responses are the opposite of what you would expect to hear from an engineer in ‘high-end’ technology. Their responses would be along the lines of “it’s cutting-edge” or “it pays very well” or “the level of automation helps me become very productive”.
Yet, when engineers from large companies visit Arion Press, they cannot help being entranced by the machines, type galleys and manual nature of the work. They recognize that in the process of becoming an engineer they have lost something vital and human. In giving up craftsmanship in the pursuit of technology, in the pursuit of productivity and efficiency, something has gone awry between the head and the hand.
By all counts Arion Press is not efficient. It produces only three books a year. Each book, however, is breathtakingly beautiful and awe inspiring in the extent to which it embodies the spirit of “allusive typography” and the essence of the book. The cover for Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez, for example, has a piece of wood sourced from the very ship mentioned in the book. What you notice when you hold any book from Arion Press is the immense and intense care that has gone into it. Not surprisingly, the Press has a small but fierce group of supporters and sponsors.
Ge Wang, who heads the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustic — CCRMA for short — says, in his book Artful Design, that technology should create calm. What he advocates is this: engineers should be responsible not for making the best widget they can but for creating experiences which uplift the human spirit, which elevate the mundane, which create “needlessly beautiful” experiences. Experiences that give us a glimpse of the sublime like Arion Press’s books do.
Like all labors of love, creating books by hand is slow and consequently humanizing and enlivening. The lesson from Arion Press, if there is one, is that speed disconnects us and moves us into our heads. We become more efficient and productive but also joyless. Joy comes from slowing down and performing a labor of love with our hands.
We may not be able to stop the growth in platforms any more than automotive manufacturers can stop the growth in the assembly line. There are real benefits to millions of consumers that accrue from the efficiencies of scale. We can however choose whether the assembly line makes machines out of engineers, or as we are seeing in Tesla, makes engineers technologists again, responsible for the machines but not a part of them.
For those engineers who feel trapped inside the machine there is a way out. Technology has severed our connection to humanity, but humanity is like a weed, give it a little space and it’ll grow right back and take hold everywhere.
Make a little time, every day or every week, to work with your hands on a labor of love. Digital technologies make it easier than ever to make things like what Ge Wang shows us. If you’re not a technologist, work in wood. If that’s not possible, make a meal. Pick any material that requires you to work with your hands. Make something that creates calm. Make something sublime.
Is it not ironical that Silicon Valley, which is at the center of all technology change, also houses the last hand-printing press that in its own small way is pulling humans in the opposite direction!
