Looking over the past century, we have had various inventions that completely transformed culture and society.

1910s - automobile
1920s - radio
1950s - TV
1980s - personal computers
1990s - Internet
2010s - smart devices

Looking ahead, what is left?  I am not sure VR technology will ever be more than a niche market.  Self-driving cars has the potential to completely change our society but I think that is still decades from being ready for mainstream acceptance.  What are your thoughts?

I can see manual cars being banned by the end of the decade  ;D Once the statistics show that computers are better drivers than humans, the politicians will have to face the facts and realize manual cars have to go. If not, market pressures like car insurance will probably take care of it.  Although in this conspiracy-theory, fake-news, and emotion-driven society, who knows, it might take longer. :o

It's definitely automation in general for the 2020s. It's very easy to develop, and saves a lot of money.

I can see manual cars being banned by the end of the decade  ;D Once the statistics show that computers are better drivers than humans, the politicians will have to face the facts and realize manual cars have to go. If not, market pressures like car insurance will probably take care of it.  Although in this conspiracy-theory, fake-news, and emotion-driven society, who knows, it might take longer. :o

It's definitely automation in general for the 2020s. It's very easy to develop, and saves a lot of money.


All the older cars will have to either get replaced or convert to self driving if a law that bans manual driving passes.

I can see manual cars being banned by the end of the decade  ;D Once the statistics show that computers are better drivers than humans, the politicians will have to face the facts and realize manual cars have to go. If not, market pressures like car insurance will probably take care of it.  Although in this conspiracy-theory, fake-news, and emotion-driven society, who knows, it might take longer. :o

It's definitely automation in general for the 2020s. It's very easy to develop, and saves a lot of money.


If they ban manual cars then I will either commit suicide or drink myself to death.

I can see manual cars being banned by the end of the decade  ;D Once the statistics show that computers are better drivers than humans, the politicians will have to face the facts and realize manual cars have to go. If not, market pressures like car insurance will probably take care of it.  Although in this conspiracy-theory, fake-news, and emotion-driven society, who knows, it might take longer. :o

It's definitely automation in general for the 2020s. It's very easy to develop, and saves a lot of money.


Self-driving cars will probably be a 2020s or 2030s thing (I lean 2030s as it will take some time for the public to accept).  I do agree though, if they are statistically safer, they will catch on once people accept that fact.  However, I don't see them being banned completely, but insurance rates taking care of it.  The hardest part will be the transition.

2020 - Self-Driving Cars, Sophisticated VR and AR
2030s - Hollograms
2040s - Mind Control Devices, "Dream" Video Games. I actually kind of imagine the show Yu-Gi-Oh! taking place in the 2040s because in addition to explanig why nobody cares about Yugi's outrageous hair, all of KaibaCorp's technology seems realistically attainable within a few decades.
2050s - Human-Like A.I.
2060s - Synthesized Food
2070a - Virtual Portals
2080s - Miracle Cures
2090s - Mars Colonization
2100s - Teleportation

All the older cars will have to either get replaced or convert to self driving if a law that bans manual driving passes.


Most likely. We've had a lot of clean air requirement updates that made a lot of older cars obsolete.

Which reminds me, I think electronic cars is something else that will really take off in the 2020s/late 2010s. We have the Tesla Model S coming out in 2018, and it's $30,000, the cheapest on the market so far.

With Tesla revealing it's stunning new solar tiles, I can see renewable energy industries also experiencing a massive boom throughout the decade.

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/586A/production/_92143622_mediaitem92143621.jpg


If they ban manual cars then I will either commit suicide or drink myself to death.


Don't do that  :( You said you were a truck driver, right?


Self-driving cars will probably be a 2020s or 2030s thing (I lean 2030s as it will take some time for the public to accept).  I do agree though, if they are statistically safer, they will catch on once people accept that fact.  However, I don't see them being banned completely, but insurance rates taking care of it.  The hardest part will be the transition.


That's true. I'm probably being too bullish on the rate of adoption. However, if the Google self-driving car comes out in 2020 like planned, along with its proclaimed feature set, it would be hard to imagine something as efficient and time/energy-saving as that would take so long to catch on.


2020 - Self-Driving Cars, Sophisticated VR and AR
2030s - Hollograms
2040s - Mind Control Devices, "Dream" Video Games. I actually kind of imagine the show Yu-Gi-Oh! taking place in the 2040s because in addition to explanig why nobody cares about Yugi's outrageous hair, all of KaibaCorp's technology seems realistically attainable within a few decades.
2050s - Human-Like A.I.
2060s - Synthesized Food
2070a - Virtual Portals
2080s - Miracle Cures
2090s - Mars Colonization
2100s - Teleportation


ded

That's true. I'm probably being too bullish on the rate of adoption. However, if the Google self-driving car comes out in 2020 like planned, along with its proclaimed feature set, it would be hard to imagine something as efficient and time/energy-saving as that would take so long to catch on.


It will probably catch on with some, but it's going to take some time for a lot of people to adjust to the idea of ditching their manual-driving cars.  They will also likely be very expensive at first.  I see the transition being something similar to the transition from horse-and-buggy to the automobile in the early 20th century.  Early adopters bought their cars in the 1900s decade.  We didn't fully transition to a car-based society until the 1910s or even 1920s in some parts of the country.

If Google's self-driving car comes out in 2020 and it works well, the prices will likely drop throughout the decade with more market penetration.  People will be hesitant at first, but more people will warm to the idea as they know more people who own self-driving cars.

One thing nice about a self-driving society is that things like drunk driving will be a thing of the past.

As of now, I refuse to drive a self-driving car my entire lifetime. I heard that a lot of self-driving cars can be hacked and put people in danger, and with a lot of this new technology becoming more and more reliant on computers always being an attachment to the inside of the model/version, this puts a lot of us in danger which could cause hacks or cyber wars to happen. Did anybody on here see this documentary about satellite wars across the world in space? Even if there's a lot of security settings or updates installed in automatic cars, I still don't trust it and I feel A LOT more safe being able to manually drive myself than a car driving on its own for me.... just an accident waiting to happen.

Frankly, seeing this thread makes me feel a bit frightened for the future.  :(

It's hard to tell. People are fickle and what's popular or seems leading edge right now might not be in the next 3-5 years or so. The current climate is so technologically focused right now that we might be see a backlash towards that later on. Who knows?

3d printers and a few decades later stem cell research will change society.
3d Printers I predict will start having big changes on society in the 2020s.

I agree it will still take a fair amount of time for things like VR and self-driving cars to become standard. mqg96 makes a great point that there are serious safety concerns regarding self-driving vehicles, which would take several long years of legal inspection and technological refinement to even come close to perfecting. Hell, we're still nowhere near transforming the Internet into a fully secure network, even if some measures have been taken to cut the crap.

Even in my aforementioned example of Yu-Gi-Oh! being a surprisingly legitimate projection of the mid-21st century, Kaiba's groundbreaking technology, not yet accepted by the majority of the world, was evidently not entirely safe, as his synthetic holograms were physically and/or emotionally harmful in certain cases, and Kaiba himself gets imprisoned in his own virtual portal video game due to hackers manipulating the title's layout.

Even if safety precautions aren't a major obstacle to the implementation of new technology, however, new and groundbreaking technology almost never peaks overnight. The iPhone, by all means, has hardly changed since its 2007 introduction aside from speed, yet it took quite a few years for it to go from a mere novelty, as VR is right now, to the ubiquitous force that binds the media together.


It's hard to tell. People are fickle and what's popular or seems leading edge right now might not be in the next 3-5 years or so. The current climate is so technologically focused right now that we might be see a backlash towards that later on. Who knows?


There has always been backlash against new technology, but the progressively feeble human mind always ultimately leans towards convenience, especially in the 21st century of all eras.

There has always been backlash against new technology, but the progressively feeble human mind always ultimately leans towards convenience, especially in the 21st century of all eras.


Definitely true. I was just thinking if Donald Trump (of all damn people!) could be elected President of the United States that any change in the status quo is possible.

Definitely true. I was just thinking if Donald Trump (of all damn people!) could be elected President of the United States that any change in the status quo is possible.


Entropy

/ˈentrəpē/

1. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
2. a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.

"a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme"
synonyms: deterioration, degeneration, crumbling, decline, degradation, decomposition, breaking down, collapse;

Laziest and most disorderly option wins :P

Entropy

/ˈentrəpē/

1. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
2. a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.

"a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme"
synonyms: deterioration, degeneration, crumbling, decline, degradation, decomposition, breaking down, collapse;

Laziest and most disorderly option wins :P


Get your underground bunker ready because "most disorderly" is gonna be the next four years. :P

Get your underground bunker ready because "most disorderly" is gonna be the next four years. :P


The basement doesn't have any cellphone service, though  :-\\

The basement doesn't have any cellphone service, though  :-\\


Don't be silly. Those won't work anymore in Trump-World. :P

http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Capture12.jpg

Say hello to the Nu-America!!!

Don't be silly. Those won't work anymore in Trump-World. :P

Say hello to the Nu-America!!!


I don't want to live in a world where Tr*mp can't access his Twitter account, there's no telling what he'd do with all that new free time :o

I don't want to live in a world where Tr*mp can't access his Twitter account, there's no telling what he'd do with all that new free time :o


Oh, don't worry. All that stuff will still work for Trump just not for normal guys like you and me.

Don't do that  :( You said you were a truck driver, right?



Sorry about my earlier post, I was in kind of a foul mood when I put that up.

If I was ever stripped of the privilege of driving my own car I certainly would be depressed because I've always thought cars were cool and I love to drive, so much so that even I made a career out of it. But not depressed enough to off myself. However, if I ever got a self-driving car I could see myself becoming a much heavier drinker, since I like to drink anyway and if I had a Googlemobile I could just go from bar to bar and drink myself into oblivion until I flop down in the back seat and tell my car to take me home.  And if I lost my career because of automation and got stuck living on the "basic income" that the self-driving car fanboys keep promising us, then I'd probably binge-drink often enough to where it would shorten my life considerably because I'd feel utterly useless and really wouldn't have a whole lot of will to live.

And I think this will be a common thing. There are always unintended consequences when a new technology comes out, and I think that one of these unintended consequences is that when self-driving cars become commonplace then alcohol consumption is going to skyrocket. I wouldn't be surprised if all the lives saved by the auto fatalities that were prevented by self-driving cars are offset by the increase in deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases. I even had this funny thought today that if and when it gets to the point that it's obvious that self-driving cars are about to take over, then maybe I should buy stock in Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors and other alcohol companies.


As of now, I refuse to drive a self-driving car my entire lifetime. I heard that a lot of self-driving cars can be hacked and put people in danger, and with a lot of this new technology becoming more and more reliant on computers always being an attachment to the inside of the model/version, this puts a lot of us in danger which could cause hacks or cyber wars to happen. Did anybody on here see this documentary about satellite wars across the world in space? Even if there's a lot of security settings or updates installed in automatic cars, I still don't trust it and I feel A LOT more safe being able to manually drive myself than a car driving on its own for me.... just an accident waiting to happen.


I agree with this 100%. Although, as I stated earlier, my main opposition to self-driving cars is simply that I enjoy driving and I'd be very upset if I lost that privilege, I too don't like the idea that the potential would exist for an outside party to take over control of my car. I think that for self-driving cars to be effective then they would have to all be linked to some kind of nationwide network so they could all communicate with each other, and who's to say that some cyberterrorists from say, North Korea, couldn't introduce a virus to said network that, for example, could cause every third car to cross over the median and drive the wrong way down the interstate and cause thousands of head-on collisions all at once?  Or, some hacker could potentially kidnap you with your own car by locking you in and driving you to a secluded location.  Or, perhaps scariest of all, you could be rolling down the freeway at 85 mph on your way to Grandma's house when suddenly this pops up

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KXSJNBGUH_o/maxresdefault.jpg

and you go flying off the road and smash into a tree or plunge off of a 200-foot cliff or careen into the path of a speeding train and there's absolutely nothing whatsoever you can do about it.

No way. Maybe I'm a dinosaur but I'm driving my car myself, and they don't like it then they can take it from my cold, dead hands.

Sorry about my earlier post, I was in kind of a foul mood when I put that up.

If I was ever stripped of the privilege of driving my own car I certainly would be depressed because I've always thought cars were cool and I love to drive, so much so that even I made a career out of it. But not depressed enough to off myself. However, if I ever got a self-driving car I could see myself becoming a much heavier drinker, since I like to drink anyway and if I had a Googlemobile I could just go from bar to bar and drink myself into oblivion until I flop down in the back seat and tell my car to take me home.  And if I lost my career because of automation and got stuck living on the "basic income" that the self-driving car fanboys keep promising us, then I'd probably binge-drink often enough to where it would shorten my life considerably because I'd feel utterly useless and really wouldn't have a whole lot of will to live.

And I think this will be a common thing. There are always unintended consequences when a new technology comes out, and I think that one of these unintended consequences is that when self-driving cars become commonplace then alcohol consumption is going to skyrocket. I wouldn't be surprised if all the lives saved by the auto fatalities that were prevented by self-driving cars are offset by the increase in deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases. I even had this funny thought today that if and when it gets to the point that it's obvious that self-driving cars are about to take over, then maybe I should buy stock in Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors and other alcohol companies.

I agree with this 100%. Although, as I stated earlier, my main opposition to self-driving cars is simply that I enjoy driving and I'd be very upset if I lost that privilege, I too don't like the idea that the potential would exist for an outside party to take over control of my car. I think that for self-driving cars to be effective then they would have to all be linked to some kind of nationwide network so they could all communicate with each other, and who's to say that some cyberterrorists from say, North Korea, couldn't introduce a virus to said network that, for example, could cause every third car to cross over the median and drive the wrong way down the interstate and cause thousands of head-on collisions all at once?  Or, some hacker could potentially kidnap you with your own car by locking you in and driving you to a secluded location.  Or, perhaps scariest of all, you could be rolling down the freeway at 85 mph on your way to Grandma's house when suddenly this pops up

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KXSJNBGUH_o/maxresdefault.jpg

and you go flying off the road and smash into a tree or plunge off of a 200-foot cliff or careen into the path of a speeding train and there's absolutely nothing whatsoever you can do about it.

No way. Maybe I'm a dinosaur but I'm driving my car myself, and they don't like it then they can take it from my cold, dead hands.


I want to drive my futuristic flying car into a person's house I hate. Just smoosh them, crash into their bedroom!  :D  :D  :D

I want to drive my futuristic flying car into a person's house I hate. Just smoosh them, crash into their bedroom!  :D  :D  :D


Must you be so drastic? Why not just hover over their driveway and poop on their car?  ;D

Must you be so drastic? Why not just hover over their driveway and poop on their car?  ;D


It's a habit, probably from my depressed days.  :-X  :-X

I'm with Al. I've always enjoyed driving and the feeling of control over your transportation it gives. Public transportation was a bitch growing up. I won't trust any computers do to my job for me. People are just getting lazier and stupider.

I'm with Al. I've always enjoyed driving and the feeling of control over your transportation it gives. Public transportation was a bitch growing up. I won't trust any computers do to my job for me. People are just getting lazier and stupider.


I could only trust them if they have anti-hacker softwere in them.

I'm with Al. I've always enjoyed driving and the feeling of control over your transportation it gives. Public transportation was a bitch growing up. I won't trust any computers do to my job for me. People are just getting lazier and stupider.


And that's one of the biggest problems in society today. While there's no doubt that technology has drastically made our lives easier, there are too many people who think it is infallible and follow it blindly.

I'll give you an example: When GPS navigation systems first became commonplace oh, I think it was somewhere around 15 years ago, the system was far from perfect and you'd occasionally hear stories about people suddenly turning off of roads and driving into lakes or off of cliffs or 20 miles into the desert and when the police would ask them what the heck they were doing they'd invariably say, "B-but I was just following my GPS!" Meaning that they figured that if they paid 300 bucks for the damn thing then it has to be right all the time, and so they just follow what the screen says while being completely oblivious to their surroundings and that little Spidey Sense that we all have that tells us "Hey, something isn't quite right here..." never kicks in and into the lake they go.

It was even worse for truck drivers. Driving a tractor-trailer demands a far greater degree of situational and spatial awareness than driving a car, and one of the most important things you must learn that will determine whether or not you are a successful truck driver is simply developing a feel for where you can or can not go, because if you make a wrong turn in a semi then you can get stuck in some sticky situations that can be a real bitch to get out of. For example, you really don't want to try and maneuver a 53-foot trailer through a residential area. Yet you'd occasionally see semi trucks stuck in neighborhoods, trying to back out onto the highway because the driver was blindly following his GPS. And this was a fairly common occurrence because the early GPS units never factored in what was the fastest route, they simply calculated the shortest possible route between Point A and Point B and if you had to go twisting and turning through a neighborhood to get there, so be it.

Once these tales started getting out and the truckers started getting leery of using GPS units, the GPS manufacturers suddenly came out with, "Ta-da...Trucker GPS!"  Nope.  Although the GPS makers claimed that these new units would route trucks onto roads that were large enough to navigate on and keep them from driving under low bridges, they still weren't infallible. Certainly the instances of trucks getting misrouted were much less common, but they still happened. For example, there was an incident a few years back where a truck driver in Illinois took a wrong turn and went down a country road that had a 100 year-old covered bridge on it. Despite all the signs that warned him that the bridge was too low for him to clear and that the weight limit was far below anything a truck should be driving on, he drove across the bridge anyway and severely damaged it. Yet, once the police stopped him, he was adamant that he had done absolutely nothing wrong because he had Trucker GPS and that was the way it told him to go. The worst thing? The correct route, a state highway that had a bridge that was able to carry the weight of a large tractor-trailer, was less than a half mile away.  (The driver ended up getting a year in jail because of his stupidity.)

Don't get me wrong, I think GPS is a fantastic tool, so long as it's used properly. And I'm certain that today's GPS units are vastly superior to the ones from 15 years ago. But I'll never trust them completely. I'm not saying I would never use one, but not without first using a road atlas to double-check the route it gave me before I go, just to be certain that its okay.

Sorry if I got a little long-winded there, but the point is that I don't think I can ever have enough faith in technology to where I could trust it over my own judgment, and that's what the proponents of self-driving cars are expecting us to do.

And that's one of the biggest problems in society today. While there's no doubt that technology has drastically made our lives easier, there are too many people who think it is infallible and follow it blindly.

I'll give you an example: When GPS navigation systems first became commonplace oh, I think it was somewhere around 15 years ago, the system was far from perfect and you'd occasionally hear stories about people suddenly turning off of roads and driving into lakes or off of cliffs or 20 miles into the desert and when the police would ask them what the heck they were doing they'd invariably say, "B-but I was just following my GPS!" Meaning that they figured that if they paid 300 bucks for the damn thing then it has to be right all the time, and so they just follow what the screen says while being completely oblivious to their surroundings and that little Spidey Sense that we all have that tells us "Hey, something isn't quite right here..." never kicks in and into the lake they go.

It was even worse for truck drivers. Driving a tractor-trailer demands a far greater degree of situational and spatial awareness than driving a car, and one of the most important things you must learn that will determine whether or not you are a successful truck driver is simply developing a feel for where you can or can not go, because if you make a wrong turn in a semi then you can get stuck in some sticky situations that can be a real bitch to get out of. For example, you really don't want to try and maneuver a 53-foot trailer through a residential area. Yet you'd occasionally see semi trucks stuck in neighborhoods, trying to back out onto the highway because the driver was blindly following his GPS. And this was a fairly common occurrence because the early GPS units never factored in what was the fastest route, they simply calculated the shortest possible route between Point A and Point B and if you had to go twisting and turning through a neighborhood to get there, so be it.

Once these tales started getting out and the truckers started getting leery of using GPS units, the GPS manufacturers suddenly came out with, "Ta-da...Trucker GPS!"  Nope.  Although the GPS makers claimed that these new units would route trucks onto roads that were large enough to navigate on and keep them from driving under low bridges, they were still far from being infallible. Certainly the instances of trucks getting misrouted were much less common, but they still happened. For example, there was an incident a few years back where a truck driver in Illinois took a wrong turn and went down a country road that had a 100 year-old covered bridge on it. Despite all the signs that warned him that the bridge was too low for him to clear and that the weight limit was far below anything a truck should be driving on, he drove across the bridge anyway and severely damaged it. Yet, once the police stopped him, he was adamant that he had done absolutely nothing wrong because he had Trucker GPS and that was the way it told him to go. The worst thing? The correct route, a state highway that had a bridge that was able to carry the weight of a large tractor-trailer, was less than a half mile away.  (The driver ended up getting a year in jail because of his stupidity.)

Don't get me wrong, I think GPS is a fantastic tool, so long as it's used properly. And I'm certain that today's GPS units are vastly superior to the ones from 15 years ago. But I'll never trust them completely. I'm not saying I would never use one, but not without first using a road atlas to double-check the route it gave me before I go, just to be certain that its okay.

Sorry if I got a little long-winded there, but the point is that I don't think I can ever have enough faith in technology to where I could trust it over my own judgment, and that's what the proponents of self-driving cars are expecting us to do.


This seems like the perfect opportunity to refer to this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Httd7YE4sAs

In fact, watch all YKWBS episodes about current technological and social trends. It's such a breath of fresh air to listen to all the pretentious garbage of today torn to shreds by a man whose head is made of manure.

This seems like the perfect opportunity to refer to this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Httd7YE4sAs

In fact, watch all YKWBS episodes about current technological and social trends. It's such a breath of fresh air to listen to all the pretentious garbage of today torn to shreds by a man whose head is made of manure.


That's hilarious, and it couldn't have illustrated my point any better.  ;D

(karma +1)

I'm with Al. I've always enjoyed driving and the feeling of control over your transportation it gives. Public transportation was a bitch growing up. I won't trust any computers do to my job for me. People are just getting lazier and stupider.


And sometimes meaner too.  :-X

As of now, I refuse to drive a self-driving car my entire lifetime. I heard that a lot of self-driving cars can be hacked and put people in danger, and with a lot of this new technology becoming more and more reliant on computers always being an attachment to the inside of the model/version, this puts a lot of us in danger which could cause hacks or cyber wars to happen. Did anybody on here see this documentary about satellite wars across the world in space? Even if there's a lot of security settings or updates installed in automatic cars, I still don't trust it and I feel A LOT more safe being able to manually drive myself than a car driving on its own for me.... just an accident waiting to happen.


They can only be hacked if they're designed that way. The famous Jeep Cherokee example was a very flawed design that had the internet-connected media system hooked up to the breaks and windshield (which don't use Internet). It was extremely lazy design, and more of a warning to developers rather than consumers.

If self-driving cars are developed with security in mind, such simple mistakes like that wouldn't even be created in the first place. I'm guessing the Jeep Cherokee stops playing music the moment the automatic breaks kick in. That's a luxury feature that will need to be curtailed, and the Jeep Cherokee's driving mechanism would become unhackable. (the media system can still be hacked though, that's just how it is with internet-connected devices that allow user input and doesn't have anything to do with self-driving).

The self-driving mechanism will definitely need to be hardcoded and not require Internet. Thankfully, that's how Google is developing theirs.


Sorry about my earlier post, I was in kind of a foul mood when I put that up.

If I was ever stripped of the privilege of driving my own car I certainly would be depressed because I've always thought cars were cool and I love to drive, so much so that even I made a career out of it. But not depressed enough to off myself. However, if I ever got a self-driving car I could see myself becoming a much heavier drinker, since I like to drink anyway and if I had a Googlemobile I could just go from bar to bar and drink myself into oblivion until I flop down in the back seat and tell my car to take me home.  And if I lost my career because of automation and got stuck living on the "basic income" that the self-driving car fanboys keep promising us, then I'd probably binge-drink often enough to where it would shorten my life considerably because I'd feel utterly useless and really wouldn't have a whole lot of will to live.

And I think this will be a common thing. There are always unintended consequences when a new technology comes out, and I think that one of these unintended consequences is that when self-driving cars become commonplace then alcohol consumption is going to skyrocket. I wouldn't be surprised if all the lives saved by the auto fatalities that were prevented by self-driving cars are offset by the increase in deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases. I even had this funny thought today that if and when it gets to the point that it's obvious that self-driving cars are about to take over, then maybe I should buy stock in Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors and other alcohol companies.


That sounds a bit extreme.  :o Is driving really what's keeping people from drinking till they drop?  ;D

I take the train to work, and I just listen to an audiobook or go to sleep or play Pokémon. Isn't that what most people would do  :o


I agree with this 100%. Although, as I stated earlier, my main opposition to self-driving cars is simply that I enjoy driving and I'd be very upset if I lost that privilege, I too don't like the idea that the potential would exist for an outside party to take over control of my car. I think that for self-driving cars to be effective then they would have to all be linked to some kind of nationwide network so they could all communicate with each other, and who's to say that some cyberterrorists from say, North Korea, couldn't introduce a virus to said network that, for example, could cause every third car to cross over the median and drive the wrong way down the interstate and cause thousands of head-on collisions all at once?  Or, some hacker could potentially kidnap you with your own car by locking you in and driving you to a secluded location.  Or, perhaps scariest of all, you could be rolling down the freeway at 85 mph on your way to Grandma's house when suddenly this pops up

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KXSJNBGUH_o/maxresdefault.jpg

and you go flying off the road and smash into a tree or plunge off of a 200-foot cliff or careen into the path of a speeding train and there's absolutely nothing whatsoever you can do about it.

No way. Maybe I'm a dinosaur but I'm driving my car myself, and they don't like it then they can take it from my cold, dead hands.


Self-driving cars are being designed in a way that assumes that the other cars are human drivers, because those are the actual conditions on the road at the moment. See, for example, this Google Car demonstration, which not only takes into account other cars/cyclists/pedestrians, but also spontaneous construction sites, people parked illegally, or just general obstacles. None of this is using Internet.

dk3oc1Hr62g

With regards to BSOD, a PC uses an operating system that allows an very high level of user-customization not found in other electronics, and this greatly increases the potential to introduce errors that can cause the system to crash. In the locked down, black box, walled-garden hardware that will be found in self-driving cars, there's not much user input to be had, which greatly reduces any chance of error. Yeah, bad code can still happen, but so can faulty cars today that need to be recalled. You can't 100% remove human error.

Basically, the biggest problem with self-driving cars is not the machinery, but humans (and the humans who develop it).  :P My IT teacher in high school always used to tell us "computers never make mistakes, only humans do" (when someone would complain "I did everything right, but it's just not working!") and it's so damn true ;D

I'm with Al. I've always enjoyed driving and the feeling of control over your transportation it gives. Public transportation was a bitch growing up. I won't trust any computers do to my job for me. People are just getting lazier and stupider.


Lazy is a good thing :P

It's laziness that got cars invented in the first place :P

3d printers and a few decades later stem cell research will change society.
3d Printers I predict will start having big changes on society in the 2020s.


Will homes be able to keep 3D printers? ???

And that's one of the biggest problems in society today. While there's no doubt that technology has drastically made our lives easier, there are too many people who think it is infallible and follow it blindly.

I'll give you an example: When GPS navigation systems first became commonplace oh, I think it was somewhere around 15 years ago, the system was far from perfect and you'd occasionally hear stories about people suddenly turning off of roads and driving into lakes or off of cliffs or 20 miles into the desert and when the police would ask them what the heck they were doing they'd invariably say, "B-but I was just following my GPS!" Meaning that they figured that if they paid 300 bucks for the damn thing then it has to be right all the time, and so they just follow what the screen says while being completely oblivious to their surroundings and that little Spidey Sense that we all have that tells us "Hey, something isn't quite right here..." never kicks in and into the lake they go.

It was even worse for truck drivers. Driving a tractor-trailer demands a far greater degree of situational and spatial awareness than driving a car, and one of the most important things you must learn that will determine whether or not you are a successful truck driver is simply developing a feel for where you can or can not go, because if you make a wrong turn in a semi then you can get stuck in some sticky situations that can be a real bitch to get out of. For example, you really don't want to try and maneuver a 53-foot trailer through a residential area. Yet you'd occasionally see semi trucks stuck in neighborhoods, trying to back out onto the highway because the driver was blindly following his GPS. And this was a fairly common occurrence because the early GPS units never factored in what was the fastest route, they simply calculated the shortest possible route between Point A and Point B and if you had to go twisting and turning through a neighborhood to get there, so be it.

Once these tales started getting out and the truckers started getting leery of using GPS units, the GPS manufacturers suddenly came out with, "Ta-da...Trucker GPS!"  Nope.  Although the GPS makers claimed that these new units would route trucks onto roads that were large enough to navigate on and keep them from driving under low bridges, they still weren't infallible. Certainly the instances of trucks getting misrouted were much less common, but they still happened. For example, there was an incident a few years back where a truck driver in Illinois took a wrong turn and went down a country road that had a 100 year-old covered bridge on it. Despite all the signs that warned him that the bridge was too low for him to clear and that the weight limit was far below anything a truck should be driving on, he drove across the bridge anyway and severely damaged it. Yet, once the police stopped him, he was adamant that he had done absolutely nothing wrong because he had Trucker GPS and that was the way it told him to go. The worst thing? The correct route, a state highway that had a bridge that was able to carry the weight of a large tractor-trailer, was less than a half mile away.  (The driver ended up getting a year in jail because of his stupidity.)

Don't get me wrong, I think GPS is a fantastic tool, so long as it's used properly. And I'm certain that today's GPS units are vastly superior to the ones from 15 years ago. But I'll never trust them completely. I'm not saying I would never use one, but not without first using a road atlas to double-check the route it gave me before I go, just to be certain that its okay.

Sorry if I got a little long-winded there, but the point is that I don't think I can ever have enough faith in technology to where I could trust it over my own judgment, and that's what the proponents of self-driving cars are expecting us to do.


I see where you're coming from. It will probably take a long time to perfect the technology, if it can even perfect itself. Manual cars being banned by 2030 was too bullish of a prediction.

In a battle between a human with no GPS, and a human with GPS, I think the stats bear it out for the latter. A lot of time saved, less likely to get lost, and possibly even less accidents. A human equipped with GPS is statistically likely to be the better driver. But a human who shuts off his brain and let's the GPS do everything, then that's worse than a human+GPS.

In the battle of  1) human+manual car, 2) human+self-driving car, 3) self-driving car with no human input, it will be a while before #3 overtakes #2, although I imagine #2 overtaking #1 very quickly. There's also that human element to it, where a fatal crash caused by human error is seen as within our control, whereas a fatal crash caused by computer errors beyond our direct control is seen as tragic and unjust.

I can forsee it being banned in certain areas where software errors are less likely to be fatal, though. Big cities and certain stretch of highways etc. (heck, in a lot of cities, there are already movements to get cars banned outright LOL). A nationwide ban is probably not happening though.

This seems like the perfect opportunity to refer to this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Httd7YE4sAs

In fact, watch all YKWBS episodes about current technological and social trends. It's such a breath of fresh air to listen to all the pretentious garbage of today torn to shreds by a man whose head is made of manure.


Wow, I couldn't think of that before. I used to watch all of YKWBS episodes when I was about 12, but I watched it only to get a laugh.  ;D

And that's one of the biggest problems in society today. While there's no doubt that technology has drastically made our lives easier, there are too many people who think it is infallible and follow it blindly.

I'll give you an example: When GPS navigation systems first became commonplace oh, I think it was somewhere around 15 years ago, the system was far from perfect and you'd occasionally hear stories about people suddenly turning off of roads and driving into lakes or off of cliffs or 20 miles into the desert and when the police would ask them what the heck they were doing they'd invariably say, "B-but I was just following my GPS!" Meaning that they figured that if they paid 300 bucks for the damn thing then it has to be right all the time, and so they just follow what the screen says while being completely oblivious to their surroundings and that little Spidey Sense that we all have that tells us "Hey, something isn't quite right here..." never kicks in and into the lake they go.

It was even worse for truck drivers. Driving a tractor-trailer demands a far greater degree of situational and spatial awareness than driving a car, and one of the most important things you must learn that will determine whether or not you are a successful truck driver is simply developing a feel for where you can or can not go, because if you make a wrong turn in a semi then you can get stuck in some sticky situations that can be a real bitch to get out of. For example, you really don't want to try and maneuver a 53-foot trailer through a residential area. Yet you'd occasionally see semi trucks stuck in neighborhoods, trying to back out onto the highway because the driver was blindly following his GPS. And this was a fairly common occurrence because the early GPS units never factored in what was the fastest route, they simply calculated the shortest possible route between Point A and Point B and if you had to go twisting and turning through a neighborhood to get there, so be it.

Once these tales started getting out and the truckers started getting leery of using GPS units, the GPS manufacturers suddenly came out with, "Ta-da...Trucker GPS!"  Nope.  Although the GPS makers claimed that these new units would route trucks onto roads that were large enough to navigate on and keep them from driving under low bridges, they still weren't infallible. Certainly the instances of trucks getting misrouted were much less common, but they still happened. For example, there was an incident a few years back where a truck driver in Illinois took a wrong turn and went down a country road that had a 100 year-old covered bridge on it. Despite all the signs that warned him that the bridge was too low for him to clear and that the weight limit was far below anything a truck should be driving on, he drove across the bridge anyway and severely damaged it. Yet, once the police stopped him, he was adamant that he had done absolutely nothing wrong because he had Trucker GPS and that was the way it told him to go. The worst thing? The correct route, a state highway that had a bridge that was able to carry the weight of a large tractor-trailer, was less than a half mile away.  (The driver ended up getting a year in jail because of his stupidity.)

Don't get me wrong, I think GPS is a fantastic tool, so long as it's used properly. And I'm certain that today's GPS units are vastly superior to the ones from 15 years ago. But I'll never trust them completely. I'm not saying I would never use one, but not without first using a road atlas to double-check the route it gave me before I go, just to be certain that its okay.

Sorry if I got a little long-winded there, but the point is that I don't think I can ever have enough faith in technology to where I could trust it over my own judgment, and that's what the proponents of self-driving cars are expecting us to do.


Excellent point. You just can't trust computers 100% and think you'll get good results. People need to start using their brains.


This seems like the perfect opportunity to refer to this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Httd7YE4sAs

In fact, watch all YKWBS episodes about current technological and social trends. It's such a breath of fresh air to listen to all the pretentious garbage of today torn to shreds by a man whose head is made of manure.


Another great James Rolfe series!


And sometimes meaner too.  :-X


A lot of people today are lot ruder and will pull out their phones right in the middle of a conversation with you.


Lazy is a good thing :P

It's laziness that got cars invented in the first place :P


Lazy ain't no good. ;)

They can only be hacked if they're designed that way. The famous Jeep Cherokee example was a very flawed design that had the internet-connected media system hooked up to the breaks and windshield (which don't use Internet). It was extremely lazy design, and more of a warning to developers rather than consumers.

If self-driving cars are developed with security in mind, such simple mistakes like that wouldn't even be created in the first place. I'm guessing the Jeep Cherokee stops playing music the moment the automatic breaks kick in. That's a luxury feature that will need to be curtailed, and the Jeep Cherokee's driving mechanism would become unhackable. (the media system can still be hacked though, that's just how it is with internet-connected devices that allow user input and doesn't have anything to do with self-driving).

That's Chrysler for you.  ;D



The self-driving mechanism will definitely need to be hardcoded and not require Internet. Thankfully, that's how Google is developing theirs.

Self-driving cars are being designed in a way that assumes that the other cars are human drivers, because those are the actual conditions on the road at the moment. See, for example, this Google Car demonstration, which not only takes into account other cars/cyclists/pedestrians, but also spontaneous construction sites, people parked illegally, or just general obstacles. None of this is using Internet.

dk3oc1Hr62g

With regards to BSOD, a PC uses an operating system that allows an very high level of user-customization not found in other electronics, and this greatly increases the potential to introduce errors that can cause the system to crash. In the locked down, black box, walled-garden hardware that will be found in self-driving cars, there's not much user input to be had, which greatly reduces any chance of error. Yeah, bad code can still happen, but so can faulty cars today that need to be recalled. You can't 100% remove human error.

Basically, the biggest problem with self-driving cars is not the machinery, but humans (and the humans who develop it).  :P My IT teacher in high school always used to tell us "computers never make mistakes, only humans do" (when someone would complain "I did everything right, but it's just not working!") and it's so damn true ;D


Interesting enough, this post puts my mind at ease about the technology a little bit. Google and Tesla might be getting all the press right now, but the truth is is that the major auto companies have had decades of experience incorporating electronics into their vehicles, including electronic ignition systems (replacing mechanical points and distributor systems), electronic fuel injection, onboard diagnostic systems, and other electronic engine control systems. All of these have been developed and refined over the last 30-40 years, to the point where they are now so effective and reliable that engines not only last 2-3 times as long as they used to, but they also put out much more horsepower while at the same time being much more efficient. You can get cars today that put out 200 hp while at the same time pushing 40 mpg, figures that were unheard of 20-30 years ago.

Also, the electronic control systems have become so reliable that rarely if ever do you hear of cars breaking down due to electronic failures. (Sometimes sensors and solenoids will wear out but they're usually easy to replace, depending on where they're located on the motor.) This happened quite a bit in the 1980's because the technology wasn't there yet, but not anymore. And because of their decades of expertise in developing automotive electronics systems (and, in the case of Ford and GM, over 100 years of developing automobiles themselves), I think the major automakers are going to have a definite edge over Google and Tesla.

Also, even though it's only been over the last few years that self-driving cars have really entered the public consciousness I now realize, after giving it some thought, that the automakers have been working towards this since probably the early 1990's. When self-driving cars finally do hit the market sometime in the next 10-15 years it's going to seem like they came out of the blue, but it's clear to me now that they've been slowly developing the components needed to make self-driving cars possible and gradually incorporating them into their new models. It began with anti-lock brake systems and automatic traction control, and more recently we're starting to see features such as adaptive cruise control and automatic lake keeping, and now this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apxOMcaxkS4

Which I hate by the way, and it goes back to my last point about people blindly relying on technology.



Not to mention that now you can get cars that parallel park themselves (yet another lost art) and Ford even now has a truck that will do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrFoI3zsS0M

Which I also hate, because if you're the macho type that has to have a big truck and a big boat then you should be able to back the damn thing yourself.  ;D 


But again, it's suddenly clear to me that they've been working towards a self-driving car for quite some time now. And for when self-driving cars do become a reality I offer you this one piece of advice: Don't buy one right away. I've always heard that when a new model of car or truck is introduced, you should never buy one until they've made them for at least a year or two before they work the bugs out.

Excellent point. You just can't trust computers 100% and think you'll get good results. People need to start using their brains.

Another great James Rolfe series!

A lot of people today are lot ruder and will pull out their phones right in the middle of a conversation with you.

Lazy ain't no good. ;)


I know just what you mean, Jordan.  ::)

I know just what you mean, Jordan.  ::)


It seems that the more technology we have, the more disregard people have for things like manners. I can't tell you how many times groups of teenagers will block public stairwells just to check their phones. ::)

Robotic pets. I could use a robotic pet, or two.  8)

It seems that the more technology we have, the more disregard people have for things like manners. I can't tell you how many times groups of teenagers will block public stairwells just to check their phones. ::)


The solution is more technology! Escalators!


Robotic pets. I could use a robotic pet, or two.  8)


What about a VR pet? Nintendogs 2020!

That's Chrysler for you.  ;D

Interesting enough, this post puts my mind at ease about the technology a little bit. Google and Tesla might be getting all the press right now, but the truth is is that the major auto companies have had decades of experience incorporating electronics into their vehicles, including electronic ignition systems (replacing mechanical points and distributor systems), electronic fuel injection, onboard diagnostic systems, and other electronic engine control systems. All of these have been developed and refined over the last 30-40 years, to the point where they are now so effective and reliable that engines not only last 2-3 times as long as they used to, but they also put out much more horsepower while at the same time being much more efficient. You can get cars today that put out 200 hp while at the same time pushing 40 mpg, figures that were unheard of 20-30 years ago.

Also, the electronic control systems have become so reliable that rarely if ever do you hear of cars breaking down due to electronic failures. (Sometimes sensors and solenoids will wear out but they're usually easy to replace, depending on where they're located on the motor.) This happened quite a bit in the 1980's because the technology wasn't there yet, but not anymore. And because of their decades of expertise in developing automotive electronics systems (and, in the case of Ford and GM, over 100 years of developing automobiles themselves), I think the major automakers are going to have a definite edge over Google and Tesla.

Also, even though it's only been over the last few years that self-driving cars have really entered the public consciousness I now realize, after giving it some thought, that the automakers have been working towards this since probably the early 1990's. When self-driving cars finally do hit the market sometime in the next 10-15 years it's going to seem like they came out of the blue, but it's clear to me now that they've been slowly developing the components needed to make self-driving cars possible and gradually incorporating them into their new models. It began with anti-lock brake systems and automatic traction control, and more recently we're starting to see features such as adaptive cruise control and automatic lake keeping, and now this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apxOMcaxkS4

Which I hate by the way, and it goes back to my last point about people blindly relying on technology.



Not to mention that now you can get cars that parallel park themselves (yet another lost art) and Ford even now has a truck that will do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrFoI3zsS0M

Which I also hate, because if you're the macho type that has to have a big truck and a big boat then you should be able to back the damn thing yourself.  ;D 


But again, it's suddenly clear to me that they've been working towards a self-driving car for quite some time now. And for when self-driving cars do become a reality I offer you this one piece of advice: Don't buy one right away. I've always heard that when a new model of car or truck is introduced, you should never buy one until they've made them for at least a year or two before they work the bugs out.


That singing ad looks like trouble! I also feel uncomfortable with them being advertised that way. That emergency break should be for... emergencies, not every time you zone out.  :o

This was actually a problem that came up for Google. After numerous tests, they figured NHTSA Level 2 (semi-autonomous) car is less safe than a Level 4 (fully autonomous) car because they found that people pay less attention when driving a semi-autonomous vehicle, even though Level 2 vehicles are designed so that an attentive human is assisting in driving.

The full interview is here but this is the relevant part:


What can be learned from the Tesla fatality?

Well, first of all, it’s a tragedy. I mean, Joshua Brown lost his life. A couple of key points, though. One is, he was one of probably a hundred or so people who died that day in automotive fatalities, in the U.S. alone. You know the statistics: 35,000 fatalities, up 7 percent from the year prior. Globally, it’s over 1.2 million. It’s as if a 737 was crashing every hour of every day all year. From a macro standpoint, it’s a very, very big problem.

But we need to make sure we’re using the right language when we talk about what happened with that accident, because that wasn’t a self-driving car, what we refer to as an L4, or fully autonomous car. That was a car with traffic-aware cruise control and a lane-keeping function—an L2, where, for better or worse, it was the responsibility of the driver to be cautious. We, as humans, are fallible creatures. confirms our sense that the route to full autonomy, though much harder, is the right route. And we’ve learned from experience what happens when you put really smart people with really clear instructions inside a car with capabilities like that Tesla one.

Back in 2012 we had a technology that was very similar. We let Google employees test it, after lengthy training sessions imploring them to pay attention at all times. We wanted to see how they were interacting with the technology. After three months we saw enough to say this is definitely a problem. People would take their eyes off the road for some period, look down at their phones and start texting while in the driver’s seat. Turning around to the back to get their laptop because they needed to plug their phone in. Right? When you’re hurtling down the road at 60 miles an hour in a two-ton vehicle?

That takes us to the fundamental conundrum of the L2 semiautonomous solutions: As they get better and better, but not quite good enough for humans to zone out entirely, then risk increases. So we need to take the human out of the loop. With L4, which is our focus at Google, the idea is, you don’t need a steering wheel or controls because we’re going to take care of everything, and you just have to say, “I want to go to that destination,” and the car will take you there.

re: the boat. Hey, no one has to know that you're cheating. ;D What's funny is you need to prove you can parallel park to get your full driver's licence here, I always wondered what their policy on bringing your self-parallel parking car was.  :D

Good point about adopting technology early. That's always been a weak spot for me.  :-\\