Whenever Kill Bill: Vol. 1 comes on TV, no matter what point it is in the story, I have to sit down and watch it. I can’t help it. It’s just a compellingly rewatchable movie. (Vol. 2? Not so much.) And while I derive a great deal of enjoyment out of watching the movie, there is one sequence that is and will always be my favorite: the Bride’s meeting with Hattori Hanzo, the legendary craftsman of samurai swords.

Ponder this for a moment. In the midst of a revenge spree, it matters to the main character not that she just has any old weapon. She has to have a particular weapon, made by a particular craftsman–the man regarded as making only the finest swords. And throughout both film volumes, characters take time out to admire the Bride’s sword, and express their admiration for its maker. Indeed, when confronted by the Bride in a duel, the character O-Ren Ishii refuses to believe that her enemy could possess such a weapon until it kills her. Her last words in the film are: “That really was a Hattori Hanzo sword.”

If you stop and think about this for a moment, you can see what a rare thing this is in our culture. We don’t celebrate craftsmen. Indeed, we don’t even really have craftsmen. Virtually everything we own is mass produced. And disposable, at that. From the Kill Bill films, one assumes that a Hattori Hanzo sword is a precious, durable thing. No doubt the Bride will pass on that sword to her daughter, and it will pass from her daughter to her grandaughter. Perhaps for generations. In the meantime, virtually everything I own, I purchased new. The few well crafted things that have been handed down to me, I cherish. My great-grandfather’s pipe, for example. Which is absolutely beautiful.

Our economy isn’t really built for solid craftsmanship anymore. It’s all about new models. New features. Turnover. Gone are the days of craftsmanship. Here to stay are the days of branding. A well-built brand is more important to most companies these days than well-built products. Which makes sense, given that a large number of companies outsource their manufacturing to factories in China and other places. Sometimes rivals even outsource their manufacturing to the same factories.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a company brand per se. Like the stamp of a craftsman, a company’s reputation can be built on quality, as well. But typically that quality is built by the guiding vision of just a handful of people, if not one person. Does anybody doubt that Apple’s brand is intimately bound up with Steve Jobs’ vision for the company?

Such branding, however, is rare in the days where corporate CEOs might take the reins of a company for only a handful of years. Especially when those CEOs are known for their expertise at “business”–but not the product or service that the company makes. Rare is the CEO with experience on the assembly line or a degree in engineering.

Indeed, it seems that the only place in the American economy where a craftsman’s stamp is still viable is in the realm of intellectual property. Indeed, it’s intellectual property where the cachet of a craftsman is probably gaining in currency. Movie fans flock to films by their favorite directors or writers or movie stars, even if they don’t know much about the movie. Video gamers line up around the block because Sid Meier or Will Wright has created a new game.

This wasn’t always the case. In the beginning, movies were branded by studio, not director. Sure, the stars were used in advertising, but because of long-term contracts, the stars brand was inevitably bound up in the studios. It was only as the cost of producing films declined that directors and writers were allowed to stand out more. Think of Robert Rodriguez, who made his first film for less than the average American household’s credit card debt. Or Quentin Tarantino, who started as a clerk in a video store. The low cost of producing independent films allowed for more involvement by craftsmen, and less involvement by studios.

The Internet promises to add to this even more. Fiction authors such as John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow have been able to bypass traditional book marketing and engage their audiences. Joss Whedon, tired of studio interference in his projects, turned to the web to create the Emmy-nominated Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Small farmers have been using the internet to promote community sustained agriculture, where local consumers can “subscribe” to a farm’s vegetables. Other small businesses that might have had to pack it in for lack of interest twenty years ago now find that through the web, they can find more customers than they can handle.

What’s even more exciting is that the internet is helping to bring down the costs of actually making things. The Instructables community has tons of do-it-yourself projects. Elsewhere on the web, you can read about advancements in micro-machining that allow for more hand-crafted products in the home. It’s conceivable that advances in manufacturing equipment might allow for more people being able to build complicated things in their basements, even constructed out of fine machined metals, then offer them for sale online.

In other words, the name of a craftsman like Hattori Hanzo might mean something again.