Thursday, August 09, 2012

Motherless Brooklyn

"It's amazing to me that we let humans drive cars."Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Well this will draw hellfire from LeBron, but I absolutely hate the idea of a driverless car.

To me, it's just one more intrusive regulation. One more freedom gone.

As a technological innovation, it's really weak beer isn't it?

We have seen the future and it's not flying cars or teleporters, it's people yoked together on a virtual leash.

The system will only really "work" (and by work I mean control us) if everybody is using it, so eventually it will become mandatory.

Google is a freakin' tool for big brother. Just look at the quote. Whatever happened to "don't be evil"?

Maybe the highway patrol unions and the makers of radar detectors can team up to fight this in court and get it squashed!



11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ideas for further insightful comments from DAngus:

-I hate autopilot
-I hate robotic surgery
-I hate traffic lights

The Pol said...

If you had a driverless car though, you could write these grumpy blogposts while riding in your car. Win-win

Robert Martinez said...

K.

Mike said...

You are right. You won't even be able to sneak out on the wife at night.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely right on. This is all about control of information of where everyone's vehicle is, at all times. Big Brother will track your every move.

Dave said...

Suppose we lived in a world with privatized roads, at least privatized highways that connected cities.

Would you be opposed to the owners of these roads requiring all cars on the roads to be driverless? Perhaps there would be high enough demand for regular cars that there would be some private roads that allowed both types of cars, or some that banned driverless cars.

Bill M said...

Um, the Google cars are fully autonomous and are not remotely controlled from some central controller.

Also, the Google cars are currently driving themselves among manually driven cars, so all the cars on the road don't have to be automated for this to work. They could also start out by just self parking so you get to your destination and tell the car to park itself somewhere. Then you would have it come back to get you when you're ready to leave.

I look forward to our car overlords arrival.

Anonymous said...

People are idiots, so why give them a half ton death machine?

Davo said...

Thank God someone is finally warning of what is to come. Those of us who enjoy driving (and testing the boundaries) will one day look back fondly on these good old days. Driverless cars will be just another reason for govt to treat us like kids and take away personal responsibility.

JimM47 said...

As long as there is a drug war, the police will resist 100% automated roads. As it is, right now, engaging in normal driving behavior (or, sadly, legal driving behavior, because that is abnormal, and therefore suspicious) is a lisence for an officer to pull you over. They can then claim suspicion, often by claiming that a dog made an alert outside the dashcam's view, and search the car. If you have all automated cars, it is a lot harder to claim that a car was driving suspiciously.And if the car is automated, it has cameras to record any shenanigans an officer engages in.

Atthe very least, it is going to be a lot easier to collect data on racial (or other) bias if a machine is driving every car, and it is initiating or recording the car being pulled over. The unavailability of the data that could provide is a major barrier for a whole slew of civil rights suits currently.

J Scheppers said...

I like the idea of much of the driving process being automated. But I believe it will be the slippery slope that will break through the governmental barriers to entry. It has already started with lane control, backing up hazard notifications and auto parallel parking.

The friction of big brother and big legal will slow efficient implimentation, but that is true for all new value propositions.