by Jeff Burgar

There just isn’t anything quite as versatile as a human body.

It can walk, climb, pound nails, wheel cement, saw wood, drive vehicles from lawn mowers to combines to gravel trucks and oh, so much more.

Unfortunately, the body has drawbacks. It wants to be paid for work. It gets sick. It wants holidays. It can’t work in the dark and most times, doesn’t like working in rain, when it’s hot, when it’s cold and when, it just doesn’t feel like working.

This all makes a good case for robots. In fact, one of these days many of us might find our job taken over by some kind of computerized machine, a real thinking computer, or, if not a complete mechanical person, something along that line. Like a specialized machine that will fix a tire. Maybe another one that will fry eggs.

In one small corner of technology, our world is already well on the way to self-driving cars and trucks. There are already such vehicles allowed in several American states. So why not self-driving combines or tractors? Dump trucks?

This is a future in many ways very close to happening. Yet, it is also, very far away for so many of us in rural Canada, whether we be in towns like High Prairie, First Nations like Sucker Creek, Metis settlements like East Prarie or all the many hamlets and villages around our region.

Why far away? Because our rural areas do not have the high-speed internet and networking services cities, even today, are taking for granted. High speed, called broadband, is the internet taken to ever faster speeds. Faster speed means more can be done.

Fifteen years ago, it was a surprise to many people when they phoned their “tech support” phone number, the voice that answered had an East Indian accent. In five years, or less, it is entirely possible our local Farmer Dave won’t be driving his combine in the fall. That same “support desk” might be driving it for him, operating his machine from 14,000 kilometres away for the equivalent of $4.00 per hour.

“Frank,” the fellow who stocks shelves all night at the local grocery store will be gone. Instead, the Flestado family in the Phillipines remotely manages all the night machines. From stocking shelves to operating the cashouts, to cleaning floors and handling security.

Security? It’s only a small step from keeping an eye on the store floor, to watching rural highways, being on the lookout for the errant drunk driver or drugged up speeder who is still “self-driving” his junker. High Prairie already has a bank of cameras around the town.

A promised land where robot machines do all the heavy lifting is still far away. But not so very far, no matter what many dinosaurs are saying, is a middle-future, where remote controlled craft, machines and tools fill in so many gaps. The operator might be the neighbour next door in the farmhouse. Across town. Or around the world in the Philippines.

This is a broadband world that is already upon us. Cities will get this no matter what. Meanwhile, if all of rural Canada doesn’t work together on this, we will fall even further behind from where we are now.