Source: Google’s Driverless Car Rear-Ended, Brin Says, Defending Effort – Bloomberg Business
Is this really a good idea? This driverless car idea is an invention looking for a need much like for example, a gas powered toothpick. Self flushing toilets or light switches that turn on and off automatically may have their uses, but have we become so lazy that we need self driving cars? It’s like sex without having to undress and clean up afterwards: is there a market for this?
These kinds of pursuits are contributing to the dweebing of the population; a process that has been on going for most of the last generation. If you think about it, the gradual transition from a society that communicates with others by the richness of language and voice to one in which interaction is mainly done by text is right at the leading edge of this dweebing. Instead of being inclusive, texting actually isolates people from one another. It increasingly dehumanizes the most elementary of human experiences to that of abstract interaction. Nuance and subtlety are eliminated to be replaced by the canned LOL or OMG.
Driverless cars would contribute even more to this sense of isolation. Besides, given the universal experience of software failures, long reboots and arcane glitches with ubiquitous computers, why would anyone place their welfare in the hands of the software geeks that are in charge of driverless cars? You don’t have to be paranoid to imagine that once you cede control of a vehicle to some monitoring facility, you are then at the mercy of whomever is programming that car. Imagine getting into one of these cars; the doors lock and the next thing you know, you’re at your mother in law’s place. There are already numerous options for people who feel that driving is just too much of an inconvenience. They’re called cabs.
link: Obama warns Coast Guard cadets global warming a national security ‘threat’ | Fox News
So in essence, the President is claiming that the weather is the greatest threat to national security.
The weather.
A nation that’s been around since 1776, one that has been instrumental in advancing the cause of civilization, of expanding markets, of creating novel technologies, of expanding education and which has acted as a magnet for ambitious people throughout the world is being threatened by… the weather.
This is analogous to the homeowner who worries about vines growing on the brickwork as his house is being inundated with flood waters during a storm. The flip side to his thesis is that the success of the United States through its almost 250 year history may have been attributable in large part to benign weather. Any school child making that claim would not only be held back a few years, but would also be monitored for signs of mental stability. He would be spoken to slowly in monosyllables.
And yet, the person who notionally wields the most influential position in the world is making this exact claim…with a straight face. It’s as if he’s been smoking too much of the same stuff as his vice president. The correct response of the media to this utterance should be, “wait, what did he say?” instead of general indifference. If this isn’t Chauncey Gardener in real life, I’m the uncle of monkeys.
We wonder if this might cause some wheels to roll in the minds of those who had bought into the ‘vision’ of the President when he first came to public light. If nothing else, perhaps there should be a new policy created whereby political aspirants should be asked a few simple skill testing questions before being allowed to be set loose on the public. They wouldn’t have to know what a prime number is or calculate the square root of a fraction, but they would have to correctly answer the question of whether or not the weather will cause the demise of western civilization as we know it. A wrong answer would cap their political aspirations at dog catcher.