after reading all of the comments in the article, and the posts here, i am firmly convinced that the cnc machine is no more, and no less than any other tool in the shop. sure it involves a different set of skills to use, but what new tool does not? dave, you brought up the subject of lathes. most lathes nowadays have electric motors on them to do the hard work of actually spinning the blank. yet how many of us have retained the skill sets needed to operate a roman bow lathe, a pole lathe, or even a treadle lathe? those took some real walk and chew gum at the same time skills. to say anything done on cnc machines is pretty, precise, and soulless, could be said about the use of any machine assisted items made in the shop. how many prefer to round over a corner with their router rather than with a scraper, and sandpaper (sandpaper, there's one for the scraper purists)? how many prefer to use a dremmel tool, rather than gouges for carving? how many of us would like to go back to the days of sawing by hand, all of the parts we need (with varying accuracy), giving up our table saws? the list goes on. to call an item soulless because of the way the item is made, is a non-starter, as both items start in the creative mind of the woodworker, not the computer which carries out the instructions, nor the hand tools used. without the imagination of the woodworker, all of our tools, whether hand, or powered (cnc included), would be just so many interesting paperweights. now i may work with computers, and was trained as a programmer, and that makes working with a cnc machine that much less mysterious to me, than to others who are not. does that make me any less of a woodworker in all the other areas? it does not. as to the title of handmade, does the batch of turned spindles, made on a lathe with a duplicator, any less handmade than the original that it copies from? the processes are essentially the same, the idea for something comes from the brain, then put to either paper, or code by the woodworker as a design, then taken to the shop to be made, with the aid of the necessary tools. which brings me to the summation, that a cnc machine is no more, no less a tool than our table saws, lathes, drill presses, etc.