Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Autonomy is doubleplus ungood. . . . .

Google's driverless cars are better than you or I.

I think this pretty well makes the case that we ordinary folk are too stupid, defective, inattentive and hormone-ridden to be trusted to get out of our own way and therefore our self-selected superior overlords at Google and all the state and federal legislative and executive offices should require us to give up personal driving. For our own good.

Not that there is an agenda or anything like that.

By the way, how much is a commercially viable Googlemobile going to cost, anyhow? And what's the chances of our being able to pay for one with the earnings from the part-time jobs that are apparently sufficient and will be all that is available to us as a natural consequence of recent government activities?

Oh, I didn't think. Cost of purchase won't be a problem because most of us will be riding light rail, and trams, and bicycles, and busses, all while our public administrative and corporate lords will be comfortably ferried around to their chosen destinations by a driverless vehicle while they play with their I-Pads and sip beverages, traveling at exactly 1 mph under the speed limit and introducing one extra precisely measured car length distance between vehicles for every additional 10 mph, no more and no less.

No doubt, driverless vehicles will be particularly adept at dodging ponderous big busses and trains, which stop at predicted locations, so big busses are good, right?

But how good are Google driverless vehicles at taking a pleasant ride in the country, with no particular destination or purpose in mind except to enjoy the day?

And when there is a desired destination, I can generally find my way to a place where I've been before, years ago, even though I don't know the address or the names of the streets along the way. Betcha Google can't do that.

So, as for driverless driving, screwgle.

Hasn't it been demonstrated sufficiently, over and over, that whenever a change is introduced intentionally rather than organically, there's always a pile of unanticipated consequences, usually bad?

Nah, no reason we should expect anything negative, not unless we are an unwashed troglodytes who fears all things progressive.

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