“Go shovel dirt”… But maybe we can’t even do that anymore…
It used to be the ultimate insult: go dig the earth. Today, we can’t even do that. Because the earth digs itself. And it does it better than we ever could.
We’re not talking about old automatic tractors that just drive in a straight line. Those have been around for years. This is something else. The new generation of farming machines doesn’t just execute orders, it makes decisions. It doesn’t wait for instructions, it thinks.
Drones fly over fields, scan the soil, read weather data, and take real-time decisions. Ground rovers walk through crops, identify which plants are healthy and which aren’t, pick ripe fruit without crushing it. AI systems know when to plant, when to water, when to intervene. And if they make a mistake? They learn. No need for farmers. No need for anyone.
Some of them already look human. Because adaptability matters more than horsepower. They drive other machines, coordinate with drones, manage entire farm operations without a single human involved. And when one of them breaks down? Another robot comes to fix it. And if that one fails too? A third shows up. All on their own. No hands required.
That’s the real point. It’s not just about agriculture. It’s symbolic. Deeply symbolic. If even farming, a job that’s physical, complex, rooted in experience, intuition, seasons, and soil, can be fully replaced, then no job is truly safe.
Farming has always been the foundation of our survival. If today it’s not human hands feeding us but a chain of intelligent systems that never sleep, then the very meaning of human labor is gone. These aren’t just machines. They don’t just do. They understand what to do.
And if that’s true for farmers, it will soon be true for plumbers, electricians, cable installers, mechanics. All those jobs we thought were too physical, too skilled, too human to automate. Wrong. We’ve learned to replicate them.
We no longer cultivate with our hands. We cultivate with algorithms, artificial vision, neural networks. Data now matters more than sweat. And if you’re not in control of the system, you’re out.
The result? A world where go dig the earth isn’t an insult anymore. It’s a privilege. Because the earth doesn’t need us. It works on its own. And it doesn’t miss us.
The future isn’t automated. It’s dehumanized.
And if we don’t wake up now, soon enough, not even the mud will be left to us.
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC #CamisaniCalzolari #MarcoCamisaniCalzolari
Marco Camisani Calzolari
marcocamisanicalzolari.com/biography