🧰 From Mechanic to Parts Replacer — and from Machinist to Knob Turner
Once upon a time, machines were alive.
Back then, troubleshooting meant listening to a pump’s rhythm,
smelling burnt insulation, and feeling if a relay was just a bit too warm.
You could tell a cable’s mood just by looking at it.
Today, that’s called wasted time.
The modern technician doesn’t think — he scans.
An error code tells him what’s broken, and he replaces a module.
Done. No spark, no insight, no magic.
And so, the mechanic slowly became a parts replacer —
a man who knows his way around boxes, but not what’s inside.
A technician proudly swaps a €400 module
when the real problem was a three-cent layer of oxidation.
“Time is money,” they say.
But apparently, understanding has become too expensive.
And it’s not just mechanics.
The old-school machinist has been reborn as a train operator —
a title better suited for an amusement park ride.
The veterans who could feel the engine through their seat
have been replaced by button-twisters with tablets.
Where there used to be craftsmanship, there’s now firmware.
Humans have become spectators to their own tools.
Everything must be faster, safer, easier — and dumber.
Fixing something can no longer be an art,
because art can’t be measured — and therefore isn’t efficient.
But there’s still hope.
Some mechanics can still hear the difference between a bearing that spins
and a bearing that complains.
Some machinists still know that a train should rattle,
and that silence is far more dangerous.
Because a true mechanic knows —
once you stop listening, that’s when the real trouble begins.
#money #oldkills
