→ Heliotrope Pajamas

Small Nimble Robots

Wed Jul 26 09:49:57 AM PDT 2023

I was mouthing off about my robot plans on Mastodon and a fellow responded:

Small nimble robots?

We have 8 billion humans available to lift and stack rocks, and they run on food energy.

→ https://mastodon.social/@JeffAndDonkeys@spore.social/110764735175491048

I want to expand on my answer there, here.

First of all, yeah, "Small is Beautiful" and there should be dignified meaningful work for all who want it.

→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_is_Beautiful

Second, this is not that, this is back-breaking, tedious work that I'm not going to do and that I can't afford to pay others to do. (I have some twenty acres of "gravelly loam" that's basically all rocks, and I want to make robots to collect, sort, and stack the rocks into walls and such.)

If I could afford it, and if I could find people for whom it was a noble calling to pick up, sort, and yes even cherish each rock, and then settle it down again in a magnificent art structure, such as the amazing "Moongate" (a circular arch built into a stacked stone wall):

→ https://permies.com/t/50/218448/Dez-BRK-post-deep-roots#1887169

...I would do it. I'm in favor of this sort of thing, very much so. In fact, that's one of the things I hope happens: once we no longer have to "earn a living" we have time to do things like hand-made stone walls that are works of art.

I want to mention Baldassare Forestiere and the amazing Forestiere Underground Gardens that he dug by hand.

→ http://www.undergroundgardens.com/
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens
→ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUKRPoQKynk

Truly amazing and inspiring.

I think that covers it?

Work is good if it's done with a certain something that ennobles it.
Picking and stacking rocks to make structures that are art as well as useful is fantastic and I look forward to stuff like that becoming more common.
I don't have the time nor the money to do it right now.
I need these rocks moved ASAP. It's getting hot.
This is my art.

I forgot that last bit. Making robots is my art, sculpting the land to make gardens is my art, I'm not going to save the world-- I've come to accept that ;P --I'm just trying to do the right thing in my local context. The idea is that robots do all the work that we don't want to do, not that we prevent people from having fulfilling rock-wall-stacking experiences.