Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
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When I see things like that, I wonder how the person even gets out of bed.
I tend to agree with most of Bob's assessment of the future. Nailing down the timeline is difficult because it will be hockey stick shaped. There is always a tipping point where enough pieces of technology are developed sufficiently to disrupt how things used to be.
Smartphones are a good example of this phenomenon because nobody had them, and then all of a sudden the pieces needed to make them great (touch screen, GPS, camera, internet, etc) came together and most everyone adopted them. Similarly, when car tech is sufficiently developed, the sensors will be super cheap and unobtrusive, the algorithms refined, the inter-vehicle network established, and the other various technologies developed to the point that autonomy is preferred.
I wonder if our endless march towards giving up freedom for autonomy will influence our willingness to surrender personal freedoms to the government? Will freedom of speech be considered a bad idea in the future? How about freedom to associate, freedom to travel, privacy?
Somewhere around 10 years ago, I had Pandora playing music on my PC and noticed a message that said "Angie likes this song too". I was aghast that Pandora had sold that info to Facebook. It lead me to despise Facebook and not trust it. Despite that, and Facebook sucking compared to competitors, it became the dominant social media company, and I have an account to this day.
Some things I suppose I'm willing to surrender in the name of convenience or economics, but I am concerned about the slippery slope of giving up independence of thought and action.