I had a little glimpse of the future today.
I am currently working on a large campus that supports close to 5000 people. It’s a beautiful place, filled with lawns and trees and interesting architecture. It’s the middle of Autumn right now, so daylight comes late and departs too soon.
I had cause to be on campus extra early today, and needed to be in a building on the other side of the complex from where I usually work. There are well-marked, well-lit paths between buildings so a lone walk in the dark is a safe and wonderful thing to be able to do on a dewy, damp Autumn day.
As I walked along the cleared paths, the sole human out at that time, I could hear the steady crunch of fallen leaves on the lawns that lie on both sides of the paths, the only other sound breaking the silence besides my footfall. Relentlessly rolling along, crunching leaves beneath themselves, tracing their trails in the darkened dew, were robots. Diligently mowing the lawns. After hours. In the dark, damp morning. And I was the only witness to their steady onslaught upon the work once performed in daylight, by humans.