Re: So?
If you're Steven Hawking, maybe. (Myself, too. I came back from some rather serious surgery with instructions not to do a number of things, including lifting heavy objects. I was called in from medical leave to help the librarian, and some exhibit designers. "Think of me as an associative memory bank right now," I told them, and helped them find things.) But that was temporary.
By and large, I had other things to do in my daily work. Sometimes a piece would be missing from an artifact. I had to recognize something was missing, and make a replacement. The educators wanted electrostatic generators for a class, with all the accessories. I designed and made them. Then, after I'd learned how it was done, I wrote and illustrated a booklet so they could make their own. I suppose that counted as handing my work off to muscle - but it had to be educated muscle to be able to use the tools needed.
This was no art museum. I'd be lost in an art museum. This was a museum full of made things. from the last three centuries. To really understand and explain a made thing, you need experience with it. Ideally, you make one yourself.
And once I'd made enough, I would farm it out to the people that wanted it. See, there are several things you can want from an object. You may just want a lookalike to put on display. You may want the original object, preferably in good condition. (Sometimes the "good condition" takes a bit of work. The rules are different in a technology museum.) Sometimes you want a work-alike, so you can demonstrate things. But whoever does these things needs to be an artisan, a maker. The intellectual shades into the physical through many stages, and you sometimes need to lift things. Some of them weigh perhaps an ounce; some of them weigh more. The worst I ran into weighed 180 pounds; it was broken because the previous guy who tried to move it dropped it. I never should have done it, but I got away with it.
Eventually I looked over the things that needed to be moved. Fifty pounds seemed reasonable to me. If you wanted less, I'd accept thirty, or even twenty-five pounds. If you were a trained watchmaker, electronics technician, micro-machinist, or gunsmith, even just ten pounds would be acceptable. All those trades involve taking complicated things apart, seeing to whatever needs doing, and putting them back together in the same order. The mind and the hands must be in harmony for this kind of work.
You want the person repairing your car to know cars. When somebody rewires your house, the electrician must know the job, because it's going to be inspected. If you write an article and give it to a typist for a neat copy, the typist must know the difference between < and > . (Good thing I type-read that one, eh?)
You simply do not have the time and patience to educate someone in the intricate details of doing the job.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
