A humanoid robot on a charging plate before a hydroelectric dam at night

A long essay

Hell or High Water

How electrical demand for intelligent robotics will shape the century.

  • Sea Level of Power
  • Work That Walks
  • Leftover Night
  • The Beach

Electrons go to whoever can pay for the kind of watt they need.

In this book

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Firm watts, leftover night, work that walks

About this book Available now

The automobile arrived as a demand for a dense liquid found only in certain rocks. Household robots will arrive as a demand for firm electricity: watts that are there when the work is there.

This book treats the cost and timing of a watt as a waterline. Hospitals sit on the hill. Bitcoin mining sits on the sand. Walking machines sit in between: labor-hours with a plug. Electrons go to whoever can pay for the kind of watt they need.

Open software and open frames will multiply the bodies. Joints and batteries will collect the rent that copying cannot kill. Night becomes industrial time. Houses become filling stations. Countries sort into gorges that build and cities that ration.