I’ve been thinking a lot about hands recently. Even as I type this, I watch my fingers autonomously navigate the keyboard, as I dedicate my thinking power to constructing clear, cohesive and catchy sentences. Outside of myself, the force of habit — of a million essays and emails — have removed this process from the forefront of my mind and into instinct. A lot of the beauty of technology relies on this instinct and, according to this intriguing post, building this instinct is far from accidental. Solitaire purposefully embedded a drag and drop mentality while Minesweeper go us to be more precise and speedy with mouse movements.

It’s fascinating to see kids get there much earlier and faster than we did. Ninja babies stealthily swipe and poke and prod and open and close. Toddlers can break into their parents iPads, peruse their tinder profiles for hot dates, message the “toddlers who tinder” group on slack to let them know uberpram is surge pricing so it might be worth live streaming this dope toddler dj rather than actually going. It’s wild. Too wild? The jury’s still out. Many developers and schools, however, have embraced it, directing this ability towards meaningful applications (education, ADHD management, research) — all at our very fingertips.

What about the rest of the hand? The move past the fingertip to the gentle and dexterous caress of the remaining phalanges. The joy of building real things using other real things that serve a functional value as well as the a priori realness value. Manual labour as moral philosophy. I am not because I use, but because I make. Behind the old man’s embittered “In my day” scold is a hankering for a simpler, realer interaction between our hands and the world around us; an undeniable feedback loop not obscured by hype, politics and techcrunch inspired buzzwords. Peter Korn elaborates on this in his book (Why we make things) which while filled with nostalgic tone, serves to uphold the philosophy of making for it’s own sake, of the hand as master not servant.

“I paint to live, not for business”. A succinct quote, heard not from an “artist” but from an informal painter. He is one of many that uses the roughs of his hands all day every day to sustain himself and his family. The extent to which it is some sort of moral philosophy is irrelevant to him. He uses the tools available to him to make a living where he otherwise would not have many prospects. It has become customary for him to avoid shaking hands, to avoid transferring paint or plaster or glue, preferring to lead with an awkward elbow bump. The hands of the few barely touch the hands of the many.

There is an interesting metaphor here. I’ve been trying to get there naturally and with suave but it’s not coming, so I’ll hack at it just a bit more.

These scenarios of the uses of our hands are not to be held in mutual exclusivity, there is space for all of them. It is also becoming such that they can’t really exist independently of each other. The fingertip represents innovation, the fingers themselves expertise and mastery while the rough of the hand is about graft and sustenance. What good is a 3D rendering of a house with no one to build it? What good is knowing how to build it without being able to live off that talent? We need to create environments that allow each to flourish. Even further, we need to be considerate of the difficulty of each to gravitate to the other. Too often are products being made for the illustrious product users — they have enough — especially as all the while the many, regardless of their mastery, scarcely take advantage of the transformative power of technology. As the fingertips crawl forward past the edge, the rest of the hand must not be left behind. We must innovate accordingly; inclusively. Frankly, it’s also the smarter thing to do…think less open palm and more closed fist.