From: Barbara Lamar (shabrika@juno.com)
Date: Sun Nov 05 2000 - 13:48:29 MST
Thank you for the links, Doug.
> ...but they aren't original with him. Twenty years ago Robert
> Forward
> described a fractal robot working in the garden aboard a starship-
> the
> idea ain't new, or even startling.
Maybe not startling, but it's something that's newly within the realm of
near-future possibility. Not just microrobots but also larger scale
agricultural machines that could handle rows and beds of different widths
and heights and could use discrimination in planting and harvesting,
thereby eliminating the incentive for large scale monocropping. It would
be a completely different and vastly better way of producing food and
other agricultural products.
To me this is exciting, whenever or by whomever it was first voiced or
set down in writing.
And the fact that so many people seem to believe that one MUST use toxic
pesticides in order to grow food indicates that the possibilities are NOT
generally appreciated, even among people on this list.
Barbara
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