This article on The New Atlantis website talks about the loss of craftsmanship, and what it means to work with your hands (as, for instance, when you build something, repair a motorcycle, etc.) and produce something tangible vs. the more typical, 'information economy' intangible stuff such as software.

Given the intrinsic richness of manual work, cognitively, socially, and in its broader psychic appeal, the question becomes why it has suffered such a devaluation in recent years as a component of education. The economic rationale so often offered, namely that manual work is somehow going to disappear, is questionable if not preposterous, so it is in the murky realm of culture that we must look to understand these things. To this end, perhaps we need to consider the origins of shop class, so that we can better understand its demise.

I know that in my software development career spanning almost 30 years, I've observed a definite absence of the kind of satisfaction I get when I restore or repair a motorcycle or car. I can point to the newly-restored car or motorcycle, and say "I made that" or "I did that" - and most people can take it in and appreciate it. Over the years, producing software for various markets and purposes, the nearest I've come to feeling that kind of satisfaction is when I worked at Electronic Arts and developed consumer games - people knew what you were talking about - but the satisfaction was not as deep for me, because: a car or motorcycle, being a tangible object, has intrinsic value - whereas software does not - it needs to have a computer to run on, and its useful lifetime is typically short (often less than five years). Most non-techies can't really appreciate it.

Link: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/13/crawford.htm