#88:Weldon: Farming in a Barge

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days later

“Everyone here?” Weldon asked when he began his class with Chuck and what Weldon was beginning to think of as the “environmental” crew. That was silly thing to say. He knew where everyone was. Neuro-loop/SoulStone/Artificial Reality tech was a wonderful tool. Not only was it outstanding for teaching it was also fantastic for class management. He knew if everyone was there or not but old habits died hard. Today was the first day for the new spider rider class. This should be fun.



“Ok..today is familiarization. You guys don’t know squat about farming. You may think that you do but you don’t and that’s a good thing.” He told them

“ I was a farmer for my whole life. I come from several generations of farmers. I know what farming is. This ain’t it. What we are attempting to do is not farming. I don’t have a name for it yet, possibly ‘ nutritional/environmental systems management’ or some such. If we are successful it’ll be as much beyond farming as the old F-16

"was beyond the Wright Flyer.” He said.



Blank stares..

“No aviation buffs here?” he asked.

“Damn I’m getting old. Oh Hell. Maybe we’ll just call it farming anyway.” he muttered to himself..

“That means it’s gonna be some hot stuff” he repeated. ”So this is how it’s supposed to work.

next day

“Ok..we’re done with the basics. Now we get to the fun stuff. Avatar Tele-operations. That’s what this is all about. If this was the military you guys would be running fire teams and squads and I’d be the platoon leader or something. Your job is to make sure the ‘operators’ understand their job, that they do it, and that I know what the hell is going on.. “ Weldon told his gang, they laughed..

A query flagged..

“Ok...a question has been asked” Weldon said

“Why not just use programing instead of tele-operators” One of the former water treatment plant technicians asked.

“I’m glad you asked that.“ he said. “The short answer is that I don’t know how.”



“ The long answer is that the human mind is fantastic at pattern recognition and discrimination, programing a computer to do that is way hard, which is WHY I don’t know how.” he said

“The human mind can do all kinds of things, almost from birth, that is HARD to program a computer to do. If it’s hard to do then it’s not going to work so well on a computer right away. There will be bugs to troubleshoot. Whole swarms of bugs. Who’s got the time? “ He said “ why not use a wet-ware program that has been tweaked for millions of years rather than use a hardware program that’s only been up and running for a short time?” he finished.



“Don’t get me wrong. We have some programs. I stole some that I think will do a fine job. But I want them to run in parallel with the wetware. Think of it as a fire control system.” he concluded.

Silence...no one said anything. That could be good, or, it could be bad.

FIDO..( frick it..drive on)



“Think of it as an ecosystem” Weldon said later. “one that you are responsible for. It’s your job and your minions job to make sure the ecosystem doesn’t get sick.”

“There’s fancy words for all this. I don’t do fancy. Basically an animal eats foods and makes poop. Alternatively a plant eats poop and makes food. Is that so hard? Sure...there are fine distinctions. But that’s the big thing.” he said.

“Our job is to make sure everyone get’s enough to eat.” he finished.



........................
The Next Episode Is
# 89: Weldon: Q & A…
The Previous Episode was
#87: Weldon: Cleaning Barges…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
..............
Book One: SoulStone
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