Back in my days at the robot lab, one of the projects involved development of robotics for use in medical surgery. Needless to say, there were two camps of thought among the doctors involved with the project. There was a camp which had already decided that machines could not be used to do the job that a human surgeon could do.

The reality is that the machine cannot and does not replace the human element, when used in its proper environment, the machine greatly enhances human abilities.

Anyway, one of the young engineers one day at the design conference table took on one of the cantankerous doctors who generally injected negatives about the situation at every turn. The engineer tossed the doc a yellow legal tablet and a mechanical pencil and then said, "Without a ruler, draw a horizontal line exactly 1mm long exactly in the center of that page. Then turn the page and do it again on the next page. Turn that page and do it one more time. Continue on until you have drawn a 1mm horizontal line exactly in the center of every page."

I don't know if that now exasperated surgeon got the point, human beings have a way of hanging onto their prejudices and whatnot long after logic has proven the fallacy, but I personally thought that this was one of the better ways to demonstrate the ways in which robotic computer-driven machines can be used to enhance human endeavors.

The notion that something, anything, that is "all hand-crafted" must be an inherently better product than the same product produced using machine falls hard on the sword of truth here.

The modern Luthier can simply turn out a far more consistent product by taking advantage of technology such as CAD/CAM for certain of the tasks involved in building a Guitar. The ability to have a machine that can cut fingerboards and place fret slots in exactly precise positions - and then repeat that operation as many times as needed, all boards being virtually identical in terms of those critical measurements, surely only enhances the product. A plus for the consumer is that use of same likely results in lowered purchase price for a product that has a much higher level of Quality Assurance than ever before.

All those MIJ Fender Stratocasters that are now going up in price are a testimonial to the above, every single one of them featuring a C neck carve that was taken from an original USA carved Fender neck that almost all guitarists agreed had a great feel - and duplicating same on every single piece. These are the Japanese made Fenders that the president of Fender wrote about in his book, that when they opened the first shipment to be sent to Fender USA, he literally cried - because the product was so damn good.

It is human nature to resist change. I think that is something put into us by the Creator and it is there for survival purposes. But the Creator also put the ability to reason in us. We should use that ability more often, IMHO.

That robot project? It went on, moved to other campuses, received inputs from multiple research labs such as ours, and eventually culminated in the first hip joint replacement performed by a robot -- with human doctors attending, of course, and sharing the workload -- in Australia, and was a complete success.


--Mac

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