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News & ArtsThursday, March 11, 2010
Tech Tomorrow Is a Brighter Day: Robot Farmers
Posted by Charles Mudede on Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 8:09 AM
What do I see in this piece of news?
Dr Dudley and colleagues at NPL along with agricultural firm Vegetable Harvesting Systems (VHS) are working on robots that are as fast as humans at working out if a cauliflower is ready to be picked.I see nothing else than the promise of our final liberation from "the idiocy of rural life."One prototype has a multi-axis arm and the other is equipped with a blade that simply cuts and gathers. Field trials of both are being carried out on a farm in Cambridgeshire.
Let's revisit that remarkable passage in the greatest love poem of the 19th century, The Communist Manifesto:
As Deasy says in Ulysses: "Can you feel that?... Can you?"
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.
4
Oh, and Charles - wouldn't this put all the migrant farm workers out of a job? I thought you Marxists were all gung-ho about the "working man" and shit.
7
Charles, you are such a dick. I don't want to live out there either but that doesn't mean that people who do are idiots.
9
There is work being done to develop a raspberry sturdy enough to be picked by a similar robot arm. I prefer to eat the ones in my urban backyard, picked by my own hand. I oppress only myself.
12
This story made me think of Charles Stross' story "Rogue Farm", about a farmer in the future trying to work his land in the (mostly - he does have a pot-smoking helper dog that talks) traditional way, and getting menaced by a walking hivemind farm commune that squats on his property...
“Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus,” crooned the farm in a warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. “Buy my brains!” Half a dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farm’s back then retracted again, coyly.
“Don’t want no brains around here,” Joe said stubbornly, his fingers whitening on the stock of the shotgun. “Don’t want your kind round here, neither. Go away.”
Live performance of the story here for download:
http://cdn3.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP206_R…
“Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus,” crooned the farm in a warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. “Buy my brains!” Half a dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farm’s back then retracted again, coyly.
“Don’t want no brains around here,” Joe said stubbornly, his fingers whitening on the stock of the shotgun. “Don’t want your kind round here, neither. Go away.”
Live performance of the story here for download:
http://cdn3.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP206_R…
15
Even in Zimbabwe, the dullest people are from the rural areas. Indeed, they were the ones who kept Bush in power. It was impossible to explain to them that Mugabe was not working in their interest. They just could not understand these things.
16
@11: So when robot-picked cauliflower comes onto the market, are you going to make sure to buy the more expensive human-picked variety? That's the choice here. If you want to support an obsolete occupation, you've got to pay more.
If so, that's great, because I'd really like to make a living as a blacksmith some day.
If so, that's great, because I'd really like to make a living as a blacksmith some day.
17
This seems like another example of externalizing a cost and then claiming it doesn't exist. Are these robots free to manufacture and operate? Are they solar-powered? Do they never require maintenance?
Modern agriculture is inextricably tied to the era of cheap energy and lax environmental policy. It is very hard to calculate the true cost of that cauliflower.
Modern agriculture is inextricably tied to the era of cheap energy and lax environmental policy. It is very hard to calculate the true cost of that cauliflower.
18
It's always funny to see people like Mudede, who consider themselves to be liberal, expressing such blatant prejudice and bigotry.
This attitude is no different than Palin's and Coulter's frequent assertions that people in New York and other liberal urban areas aren't sufficiently patriotic.
It is powered by a reflexive ideology, willful ignorance, and prejudice, devoid of any appreciation for the subtleties of human nature and objective reality.
This attitude is no different than Palin's and Coulter's frequent assertions that people in New York and other liberal urban areas aren't sufficiently patriotic.
It is powered by a reflexive ideology, willful ignorance, and prejudice, devoid of any appreciation for the subtleties of human nature and objective reality.
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