Post by Bryan Carter

When I was 10, my dad and I could side a whole ranch house in a weekend. He nailed. I cut. He'd yell "six foot, three and a quarter," I'd sching the circular saw through the siding and have the next piece ready before he finished nailing the last one. No software. No tablets. No automation platform. Just rhythm, trust, repetition, and a kid trying to keep up. Years later, working around construction again, I started thinking about that little one-man/one-kid machine differently. Construction may be one of the last miles for automation. But the question is not just whether we can automate the work. It is whether we understand the work well enough to know what should be preserved, what should be improved, and what should never be automated at all. I wrote more about that here. (click the image for the full essay)