That's certainly a way that our industry might mature (and it will need to mature eventually), but a guild becomes its own political organization with issues of corruption, bureaucracy, inaccessibility, inequity, etc that compete against quality of craft. It does ensure some stability in quality, but makes it much harder to break into the craft, much hard to approach the craft in different ways, favors artisans who can "play the right game and know the right people", and loses some efficiency to all the political overhead.
We might be close to developing that model, or we might not. I personally don't know that we need to rush there. I'm of the auto-didactic hustler crop of hacker/engineers and many of us wouldn't have fared well if there was already a strong guild culture as we were coming up. I'm not sure I'm ready to start building that wall behind me yet.
We might be close to developing that model, or we might not. I personally don't know that we need to rush there. I'm of the auto-didactic hustler crop of hacker/engineers and many of us wouldn't have fared well if there was already a strong guild culture as we were coming up. I'm not sure I'm ready to start building that wall behind me yet.