> About three years after finishing the project, I had to go over to
> this building on some staff errand for student services. I walked into
> the front lobby on one side and admired the dual elliptical stairs
> that separated the entry way from the long first floor corridor. The
> stairway was done in marble with bronze bannisters. Wow what a fucking
> job that was and what a palace this is, I thought. All the pride and
> value of craftsmenship was owned by somebody else, my bitterist enemy
> the haute bourgeoisie of the state public officials who I battled
> daily in education reform.
Awareness of alienation from one's creations happens in other fields as well. I have friends who work as programmers, and choose jobs based on the ability to write open source software... because at the end of the day, they will own what they created. Likewise, the software I've written that I care most about is the software I've shared and given away for free, not the software which is used by thousands of people every day.
(A bit of technological determinism here - the economic relations underlying software production are very much a result of the ability to replicate the end result at no cost, and to extend and customize it as well.)
Still, how sure are you that *everyone* suffers from this sort of alienation?