SimplicityRevisited: Minions Wanted, Apply Now
We interrupt our usual programming for this modest digression...
Photo courtesy of Steve Buissinne and https://pixabay.com
Some people long for simplicity. They dream of downsizing their lives, perhaps moving to Walden Pond and living off the land.
My thoughts are perhaps a little more Solomonic...
Photo courtesy of Warwick Gobel and https://imgsafe.org
I've long been jealous of Solomon in many ways - of course, as you might guess, in the most juvenile of ways, imagining a rotation of two or three women per night for the entire year...
But as I've, ahem, matured a little, ahem, my jealousy has been more focused on Solomon's access to resources...
What does this have to do with "simplicity?"
I guess my concept of simplicity is not so much the total elimination of "stuff" but the ability to keep it under tight control and fully organized.
I remember my Grandma, who read me bible stories from a very tender age and who loved me by teaching me and praying for me -- but I digress -- I remember her saying to me "A place for everything, and everything in its place." And that is something I have struggled with all my life!
As a life-long inventor,
I desperately want to have a comprehensive set of tools available to me that will enable me to implement my ideas.
Photo courtesy of m0851 and http://unsplash.com
I have been working during the last five years to improve that situation, first building a workshop in the garage, and then expanding into a woodworking shop out in the end of the driveway... And it is still not really enough! And do I ever struggle with organizing it!
I think what I really want and need, and what makes me so jealous of Solomon, is minions. Forget for a moment his superabundance of women; the man had all the wealth he needed, all the resources, and probably minions by the thousands. Hey, if he could afford 700 wives and 300 concubines, I'm sure he had a servant or two, ya think?
Well, fast-forward to the 21st century, and I do have many minions, of a kind... I do have "thinking machines" that help me with my work and help me keep my reading matter and documents and my important papers from flooding the office and overflowing my desk.
A Few Good Robots
I do have robots that help my wife keep the dishes and laundry clean without the back breaking work otherwise involved. I imagine having even more robots in the future to handle a lot of the other menial chores also.
I also recall, way back in the '70s when I was working factory maintenance, discussing with the other guys that our jobs would never be obsolete, could never be downsized, because things would always break, wear out, gum up, and otherwise deteriorate, requiring skilled labor to repair...
With the advent of AIs, however, that may one day no longer be true. AIs plus "replicators" (i.e. solid printers, CNC machine tools, etc.) It may be that rather than repair things, they will simply be disassembled by robots, recycled as raw materials, and then recreated by automated machinery...
With replicators, we need not "keep things" all filed and sorted...
Photo from Personal Collection and Courtesy of ImageSafe
Also, with replicators, we need not "keep things" all filed and sorted... just some "raw materials," out of which our replicators will "build" the things, on demand, as we need them.
OK, I am wandering far afield here, am I not? Surprised? I thought not!
So, I guess, for me, "simplicity" would be primarily a matter of far more tightly controlled organization; of truly having the "space" to store things in an organized fashion; of having robots to "deal with" keeping track of things for me; of keeping my personal space uncluttered and restful; of off-loading menial tasks so as to afford the maximum time for social interaction, for family time, for me to do what I love to do. Namely, spend hours with my granddaughter, teaching her, making her laugh, teasing her, and loving her towards a happy future womanhood.
Robert A. Heinlein's Sci-Fi stories
I also think of Robert A. Heinlein's Sci-Fi stories in which he imagined houses and spacecraft that have larger interiors than exteriors, with space folded inside in interesting and very useful ways. Cool ideas.
Photo courtesy of Thomas Budach and https://pixabay.com
I think of another of my favorite Sci-Fi novel series by [Fredrick Pohl] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_Pohl), the "Heeche" series, in which the protagonist has programmed his AI to appear beside him as a holographic Einstein... an "electronic amanuensis" who accesses information for him and keeps track of everything for him. I WANT THAT!
Help Wanted: Amanuensis
Photo courtesy of Sidney Perry and http://unsplash.com
I need an amanuensis (in the broadest possible sense of the word; a Man or Girl Friday) to facilitate my life, to deal with all the myriad and niggling and otherwise troubling details, thus freeing me up to concentrate on the technical and design problems du jour...
SOME DAY, in the Glory, if not before, I SHALL HAVE all of this, along with friends at my side to collaborate!, and then the universe will be "my oyster" and some amazing things will begin to happen...