以前在荷蘭睇咗呢套未來世界卡通片"The Jetsons", 可惜依家唔知邊度可以搵返 ?
www.zerohedge.com
Via Eric Peters of EricPetersAutos.com,
What does it mean when people talk about self-driving cars? We really ought to be talking about programmed cars.
And about
who does the programming.
The “self-driving” car doesn’t decide for itself how fast it
goes or what route it takes – at least, it won’t until it becomes an
autonomous thinking machine, an artificial intelligence. We are not
quite there yet.
So, in the meanwhile, who decides?
And it is a
who – a flesh-and-blood someone (or
someones). Guess what? It’s not you. This whole “self driving” car thing
is about taking you out of the driver’s seat. And putting someone
else in control of “your” car.
That part stays the same. Nominal ownership. You will make
the payments, pay the taxes and fees. You will still be responsible for
all of that.
But who will control the car? And how will they control it?
The “who” will be the same people who already control the roads: The
people who
are the government. Clovers. Authoritarian Control Freaks. The same people who make the laws about how fast you’re
allowed to drive, when (and whether) you’re allowed to pass, make a right on red or a U turn . . . every last little thing.
They will control your “self-driving” car.
And when they do, not only will you not be allowed to
proceed at a speed faster than they decree – or make a U turn or a right
on red . . . or do anything they do not want you to do- it will be
impossible to do so.
The car – controlled by them – will not do your bidding.
It will do theirs.
Can you imagine? I can – and it makes my teeth ache.
People have this idea that the “self driving”
future will be fast and free. A techno-Libertopia of high-speed and
high-efficiency. Cars zipping along at triple digit speeds in tight
formation, travel times cut down to a fraction of what they are now.
In fact it will be the opposite.
It will be Least Common Denominator . . .
universalized and encoded in the electro-mechanical DNA of “your” car.
No longer will you bee free to mash the gas and thread the needle
through a Clover Cluster, chuckling to yourself as you watch them recede
in the rearview. There will be no “speeding,” no right on red.
You – that is, your car – will drive at
exactly the pace of the Clover Cluster.
A slow pace.
No more burnouts; no more drifting. Nothing “aggressive.”
Acceleration will be metered in accordance with the Fear Factor of the Clover Cluster. Think of your mother-in-law.
Of your
grandmother. In her ’87 Buick Le Sabre, hunched over the over the wheel, perpetually riding the brakes.
It will have to be one size fits all. Because the
programming must be. No more wiggle room; no more driving the way you
prefer. No more driving faster – or harder – than they allow.
Individuals vary, but the Clover Hive is just that – a hive.
Napoleon chose it as the symbol of his authoritarian state for good
reason. Everyone the same and expected to do the same, except the Queen.
The analogy is excellent, too, because the people dictating programming
policy will almost certainly be “moms” and others of the female
persuasion – who esteem
saaaaaaaafety above everything and for whom velocity is the
sine qua non of not-safe.
Slower is always better.
It will be like taking the bus – only worse. The bus driver was still an autonomous individual; he
had the option to exercise initiative; he could even do something
technically illegal – but reasonable and even necessary to deal with a
situation that would otherwise mean just sitting there, Because It’s The
Law.
Imagine how it will be in your
programmed-by-others car. Traffic has come to a dead stop because of an accident up ahead.
You could drive on the shoulder – briefly – to reach that exit a few hundred yards away.
But the programmed-by-others car will veto that. It is,
after all, illegal to drive on the shoulder – and the car’s programming
won’t will permit the law to be violated. Leaving aside the Cloverific
adulation of The Law, the
lawyers would never allow it.
Can you imagine?
Well, your honor, I knew it wasn’t legal to drive on the shoulder but
I was just the passenger.
Shrug.
So the cars will be programmed to never do
anything that isn’t “safe” – as well as punctiliously, exactly legal.
And what is legal will be strictly in accordance with what your
near-sighted, fearful mother-in-law would approve of. What the
termagants who control the levers and billy clubs of government decide
is “safe.”
To believe otherwise, you must believe
that in this one instance, the government will
not use technology to further control us. That it will set us free, expand our liberty.
The one upside – maybe – is that we’ll be able to get soused
before the trip and just pass out. Tell the car to wake us up when we
get there.
Whenever that turns out to be.