My trip to Walden Pond lead me to do some reading of Thoreau's "Paradise (To Be) Regained" in which he reviewed a book (at Emerson's suggestion) written by John Adolphus Etzler, a German engineer who proposed a scheme through which men would no longer have to do diddly squat. Etzler in his book, The Paradise within Reach of All Men, without Labour by powers of Nature and Machinery (Pittsburgh, 1833), proposed a utopian scheme in which the sun, the tides and wind would be harnessed to do all things, much the same way engineers are proposing now. Thoreau found a few things wanting in Etzler's scheme and it's best to read it yourself, as you can do here: https://gutenberg.org/files/63459/63459-h/63459-h.htm not just for a view of modern ...