Yup, it’ll also uproot the very fabric that forms the layout of our land not too unlike “the Stacks” in Ready Player One, where a paradigm shift causes populations to redefine what is preferable in the land of the plenty. Empirically, American cities have used access to public transportation as a way to delimitate the very boundaries of the rich and poor neighborhoods. Capital Hill in Seattle, WA was built on mansions that had roads intentionally designed as to deny bus routes through their streets at the time and the rich flocked there. I’m curious to see if American cities become more European and build out high speed rail, or will it use autonomous cars as a decentralized mass transit system? I would like to get an autonomous flatbed truck that would drop my whip off wherever I wanted it to so I can fly to North Cakalakie for Wookie In The Woods and drive the Tail of the Dragon, so my fingers are crossed that’ll be coming in the near future. On the changing landscape, I welcome it as it’ll overall mean that things will be safer, but using cars as investment instruments that became popular up to German Banks buying air-cooled Porsches because of greater returns during a pre-pandemic market would change if humans are ethically barred from driving on public roads. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I ran across a photo of a NYC corner filled with horses, carriages, the people filling near every inch in the frame, and one single car; then a second photo taken around a hundred years later and it was the reverse, one single horse and the rest was cars. The speaker says that whole cottage industries surrounding those horses like people to pick up the poop, stablemen, cobblers, etc. shifted to other jobs but the disruption still happened none the less. I find it kind of ironic when I think of it that way, b/c here we have machines taking away driving because they are empirically better than flesh and bone humans with their damned phones, so there will be a picture of all autonomous cars in that same NYC square and one manually driven car one day. I’m honest about my skills as a driver now and where I expect them to be by the time we get legit autonomous cars, and I’ll happily let Jesus take the wheel and get back to writing my next Boing Boing post. ^_______^
1 Like
