Via Ran Prieur (apologies, I don’t know how to link to specific posts on his site), this is a great story about how a particular kind of 3D printing technology using metals recently died and disappeared. There’s no mystery involved- it’s just that it’s a technical and specialized process and private companies threw the technology away so they wouldn’t be bogged down in their race for profits.
I find this a much more likely explanation for the observations underlying the Tartarian Empire conspiracy. That conspiracy, if you’re unfamiliar, says that roughly 150 years ago all the people who knew how to make ornate and decorative architecture died in some sort of secret apocalypse that was hidden from everyday people by governmental elites; now buildings are all flat and boring because we don’t have anyone left who knows how to do anything else.
The conspiracy is obviously false, and so vague that Hitchens’s razor probably says we don’t need to spend any effort debunking it. But luckily people have spent that effort anyway. Turns out architects and historians have been observing the causes behind changing aesthetic tastes for years. And we actually do have ornamented houses, it’s just that they’re less popular among the super wealthy.
So it certainly isn’t the case the a bunch of craftspeople disappeared off the face of the earth. But it’s still possible for hands-on experience to be lost. This sucks if you want want a particular kind of archway or glazed tile for your house, but it’s a much bigger issue when somebody needs to repair a bridge or even make sustainable building materials.
Relevant listicle: 11 Vernacular Building Techniques That Are Disappearing
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