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South Central Iowa | I agree with you that it is possible 150. I don't doubt that at all, we have the technology. I didn't grow up on a dairy farm and really didn't consider myself much of a farm kid to be honest, though I come from a farm family; B.S. in Business with second in History. A modern milk barn is an amazing thing, given that it is dealing with living animals that are of different shapes and sizes and a need to be delicate. But that is still a very repetitive thing and not overly surprising that it is susceptible to mechanization. In agriculture I look to the fruit and vegetable industry to be where we loose workers over the next 50 years to mechanization; and honestly that is long overdue. As far as row crop production the value of the machine makes me doubt we leave it unattended in the field. In the very flatlands, yes I could see it, but in my area there are far too many ditches and obstacles that form, appear, and change, even between spring and summer, to ever trust leaving a $300,000 tractor and $500,000 combine unattended. The damage that they could incur and the money lost in delays and repairs from even one incident would be larger than the savings. Not to mention if a sensor failed and I didn't know or the thing lit on fire and I was at my lake house for the last nice weekend of the year, 200 miles away.
To the dead person, yes, dead is dead. Doesn't matter once it is done. But to the family, the law, and the history of our expectations of manufactured products; Machines are infallible. Humans are allowed to make errors and get second chances. We are living organisms, it is our nature to try and innovate and fail and succeed and learn and grow and create and destroy; we are organic; we are alive..... A machine is a tool we make. Whether that is a fork, wrench, automobile, or an airplane; we living man create it and we expect it to perform the task it was made to do. It is not allowed to fail because we failed in design and did not release until it was perfection. It is the expectation of our tools that they perform the job they were intended for. When they fail, we are owed a rebate or a repair or a lawsuit. This is the crux: Machines are infallible, Humans are not. That expectation will not and should not change.
Also, if person a kills person b in an auto accident, he would be liable. But if person b is killed by the GOOGLE CAR OF DEATH!...... Google is responsible. Google has a lot of money. Person a does not. Automakers have been held liable for production problems that have been blamed on deaths in the past; these silicon valley types who really don't know much about the world outside of software and programming will learn quickly that what works in a lab or in a controlled environment can easily fail in unexpected ways in the real world; especially when it is John and Jane of Kalamazoo or Paducah or Topeka or someplace responsible for the maintenance of the machine and not a team of 100's of engineers in the relatively benign environment of the bay area..... Wait til the those cars see road salt and gravel dust and people who do not wash their car! | |
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2047 Farm
