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from the who's-gonna-drive-miss-daisy? dept.
The race to bring driverless cars to the masses is only just beginning, but already it is a fight for the ages. The competition is fierce, secretive, and elite. It pits Apple against Google against Tesla against Uber: all titans of Silicon Valley, in many ways as enigmatic as they are revered.
As these technology giants zero in on the car industry, global automakers are being forced to dramatically rethink what it means to build a vehicle for the first time in a century. Aspects of this race evoke several pivotal moments in technological history: the construction of railroads, the dawn of electric light, the birth of the automobile, the beginning of aviation. There's no precedent for what engineers are trying to build now, and no single blueprint for how to build it.
Self-driving cars promise to create a new kind of leisure, offering passengers additional time for reading books, writing email, knitting, practicing an instrument, cracking open a beer, taking a catnap, and any number of other diversions. Peope who are unable to drive themselves could experience a new kind of independence. And self-driving cars could re-contextualize land-use on massive scales. In this imagined mobility utopia, drone trucks would haul packages across the country and no human would have to circle a city block in search of a parking spot.
If self-driving vehicles deliver on their promises, they will save millions of lives over the course of a few decades, destroy and create entire industries, and fundamentally change the human relationship with space and time. All of which is why some of the planet's most valuable companies are pouring billions of dollars into the effort to build driverless cars.
After automation puts everyone out of work, will anyone need to drive anywhere anymore?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 16 2015, @09:56PM
Our judicial system is currently oriented around punishing the guy least able to defend himself, because of evidence, or more commonly race / poverty / etc.
Currently the folks at the bottom take their chances with their own skill and judgement, which oddly enough isn't really all that bad. With automated cars, they'll have to take their chances with whatever corner cutting some MBA thought would get him a bonus, which is way outside of their control and is going to suck for them.
So a fairly well off white male like myself can take the extreme risk of owning an automated car because if they F me over I have the financial and social capital to fight back pretty hard, I'm under no illusion that I could take down GM, but I could really strike back hard, very hard indeed. Consider a dirt poor illegal alien woman, if the car mfgr screws her over, all she can do about it is pray they use lube, the system makes sure she is completely defenseless. Someone like that can't risk owning an automated car, her kids depend on her, etc.
The genocide of the middle class means everyone's gonna be really rich or absolutely dirt poor. I'm not sure which I'll end up. What I am sure is they're pushing a product that's perfectly suitable for the 1%ers and trying to convince the 99%ers its a great idea to screw themselves by buying it. Well, its worked with higher ed and dotcom stocks and social media stocks and real estate, so maybe it will work after all. Hmm.