Yes, there’s a subtle difference between “much effort” and “they’ll have”.
As I’ve mentioned before, I think that liability will kill truly self-driving cars. To some degree that’s being played out in the suits against Toyota and GM right now.
I can see more future in roads set aside for self-driving long-haul trucks, however.
Now that I think about it, doesn’t Asimov’s quote cover drones?
I read an article in the last few days about the farm industry being upset about not being able to use drones for monitoring their fields and spreading fertilizers and pesticides. Currently, they can use GPS technology to control spreading, and it doesn’t seem like that much of a step to have a computerized drone ensure the best spray patterns.
Not only will self-driving cars happen, they’ve already happened. A number of states allow Google to run self-driving cars, and various technologies in existing cars will plow the way through the legal thicket.
They’ll happen precisely because of safety issues. I’m already annoyed by people who don’t have computers telling them when it’s safe to change lanes. Computermobiles will eliminate drunk driving deaths, deaths by inattention, deaths by sudden illness while driving, etc… Plus of course there’s money to made. And they’ll add hours of productive time to your day.
The forces in favor are much more powerful than those opposed. Safety + Productivity + Profit > Inertia + Backward laws.
Yeah, there are technologies in high-end cars that are definitely paving the way for robot cars. Besides the stuff Reynolds mentioned, tech also exists for setting a distance from the car in front of you, and the car will maintain that distance. Only a matter of time before one can slave the steering as well as the speed to the car in front.
But I think this will happen other places before it happens in the USA. Robot cars are just another cash cow for THE core constituency of the Democratic Party – trial lawyers.
Also, who needs more time for productivity when ten percent of the people that want to work can’t find anything? Another big chunk can only find temp or part-time work. And a huge chunk know that time given up to the boss in the car is just going to be used to give the boss a bigger bonus at the end of the year. People will want that time for themselves.
Talking to my wife this evening, she mentioned that her planned work for the day got trashed when she was deemed indispensable to two projects one of her company’s muckity-mucks favors. I told her she should ask for a bigger raise and she said, “NO! I don’t want my salary to go up too fast!” Such people get riffed and replaced, as happened to a bunch of people last January. My wife is indispensable in part because she’s the last person at the company who knows how several key bits of work actually function. But they’ll lay her off too if she gets too expensive.
So people aren’t going to be too eager to give the bosses more of their time.
I admit to being both a driverless car skeptic, and that my initial comment was a cheap shot. (If you read the link, you’ll understand that I couldn’t help myself)
I find most advocates of the driverless car imagine a vehicle which will allow them to drink, pleasure themselves and play minecraft as they sport off to their fitness center. I imagine a driverless car as a vehicle in which 99.9% of the time, the car is doing all of the driving and .1% of the time, the car will either revert control to the driver or the driver will need to take control from the car. In my scenario, a lot of people will die. In my scenario, it will also be difficult to mandate driverless technology, which will render it less effective.
I admit to being both a driverless car skeptic, and that my initial comment was a cheap shot.
Cheap, but good – by which I mean effective. Similar to statements made about fusion energy.
There’s actually something pretty sad that his most accurate prediction concern gadgets.
I did read the linked article, but not the original Asimov piece. The article and Asimov’s predictions didn’t really impress me. Those guys that were from the Golden Age of Science Fiction were pretty damned good at making predictions about gadgets, and I believe Heinlein even mentioned that some of them had that down to a science. No surprise that Asimov (who was most likely the brightest of the bunch, and by a fair margin) would be good at it too.
So the article didn’t impress me much.
Maybe I’ll go dig out some of Heinlein’s predictions that he made and updated over the years. Those were generally less tech oriented and more interesting, even when wrong. I think Heinlein did his last update in 1980 in one of his anthologies.
“Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with ‘robot-brains.'”
Self-driving cars are the transportation of the future, and always will be.
Yes, there’s a subtle difference between “much effort” and “they’ll have”.
As I’ve mentioned before, I think that liability will kill truly self-driving cars. To some degree that’s being played out in the suits against Toyota and GM right now.
I can see more future in roads set aside for self-driving long-haul trucks, however.
Now that I think about it, doesn’t Asimov’s quote cover drones?
I read an article in the last few days about the farm industry being upset about not being able to use drones for monitoring their fields and spreading fertilizers and pesticides. Currently, they can use GPS technology to control spreading, and it doesn’t seem like that much of a step to have a computerized drone ensure the best spray patterns.
Not only will self-driving cars happen, they’ve already happened. A number of states allow Google to run self-driving cars, and various technologies in existing cars will plow the way through the legal thicket.
They’ll happen precisely because of safety issues. I’m already annoyed by people who don’t have computers telling them when it’s safe to change lanes. Computermobiles will eliminate drunk driving deaths, deaths by inattention, deaths by sudden illness while driving, etc… Plus of course there’s money to made. And they’ll add hours of productive time to your day.
The forces in favor are much more powerful than those opposed. Safety + Productivity + Profit > Inertia + Backward laws.
Backward laws = Geneva Conventions.
deaths by sudden illness while driving <<< deaths by sudden computer reversion to driver control
Yeah, there are technologies in high-end cars that are definitely paving the way for robot cars. Besides the stuff Reynolds mentioned, tech also exists for setting a distance from the car in front of you, and the car will maintain that distance. Only a matter of time before one can slave the steering as well as the speed to the car in front.
But I think this will happen other places before it happens in the USA. Robot cars are just another cash cow for THE core constituency of the Democratic Party – trial lawyers.
Also, who needs more time for productivity when ten percent of the people that want to work can’t find anything? Another big chunk can only find temp or part-time work. And a huge chunk know that time given up to the boss in the car is just going to be used to give the boss a bigger bonus at the end of the year. People will want that time for themselves.
Talking to my wife this evening, she mentioned that her planned work for the day got trashed when she was deemed indispensable to two projects one of her company’s muckity-mucks favors. I told her she should ask for a bigger raise and she said, “NO! I don’t want my salary to go up too fast!” Such people get riffed and replaced, as happened to a bunch of people last January. My wife is indispensable in part because she’s the last person at the company who knows how several key bits of work actually function. But they’ll lay her off too if she gets too expensive.
So people aren’t going to be too eager to give the bosses more of their time.
I admit to being both a driverless car skeptic, and that my initial comment was a cheap shot. (If you read the link, you’ll understand that I couldn’t help myself)
I find most advocates of the driverless car imagine a vehicle which will allow them to drink, pleasure themselves and play minecraft as they sport off to their fitness center. I imagine a driverless car as a vehicle in which 99.9% of the time, the car is doing all of the driving and .1% of the time, the car will either revert control to the driver or the driver will need to take control from the car. In my scenario, a lot of people will die. In my scenario, it will also be difficult to mandate driverless technology, which will render it less effective.
Did anyone read the actual essay? He’s talking about moon colonies and colonizing the continental shelves and travel by personal hovercraft.
There’s actually something pretty sad that his most accurate prediction concern gadgets.
MM: No, don’t I get partial credit for reading the link, though?
Self-driving long haul trucks? You mean trains?
Steve
I admit to being both a driverless car skeptic, and that my initial comment was a cheap shot.
Cheap, but good – by which I mean effective. Similar to statements made about fusion energy.
There’s actually something pretty sad that his most accurate prediction concern gadgets.
I did read the linked article, but not the original Asimov piece. The article and Asimov’s predictions didn’t really impress me. Those guys that were from the Golden Age of Science Fiction were pretty damned good at making predictions about gadgets, and I believe Heinlein even mentioned that some of them had that down to a science. No surprise that Asimov (who was most likely the brightest of the bunch, and by a fair margin) would be good at it too.
So the article didn’t impress me much.
Maybe I’ll go dig out some of Heinlein’s predictions that he made and updated over the years. Those were generally less tech oriented and more interesting, even when wrong. I think Heinlein did his last update in 1980 in one of his anthologies.