In my first post, I stated that I wanted to talk a bit about each of the really great inventions that will be coming out soon. The first one I wanted to talk about was the Google Car. 

There was recent news that the Google Car has been driven 300,000 miles without a single accident.  What it means is that there was not a single accident while the car was being self-driven. The New York Times wrote an article talking about how that car has been in an accident but it was rear-ended. They also talk a bit about the car’s inventor Sebastian Thrun in the article.

What these articles don’t really talk about is what the implications of us adapting a self-driving car will lead to. First I want to let you know that I really am excited and happy that we are heading in this direction. Second I am just going to state what is likely to happen when we eventually do adopt this Technology into our everyday lives.

When we do finally start using this tech a lot of change will start to happen.

Companies that previously had people delivering their products will move to self-driving cars. At first, they may require a driver with the car to take over in case anything goes wrong, but eventually, I see there being no drivers in the car with the goods.  These cars will change dramatically, a lot of them will no longer need air conditioning or windows as they will not be driving anyone around in them for deliveries. That is unless the goods that need delivery need to be cold or hot. The delivery cars will get smaller perhaps even having varying sizes just for each specific delivery.  I can see each company having hundreds of these cars all delivering the goods that people request. Depending on how long these deliveries take the need for a lot of these could decrease.

As for the cars we humans will be using. They will still have windows, air conditioning, and heating. I think that Ownership will slowly crumble as the market for driver-less taxis goes up dramatically. Why buy a car that will sit around being useless for 90% of the day? Rich people might still have them but would be looked down upon for wasting resources. Taxi cars will be inexpensive to rent and will no longer use fossil fuel.  

Laws will be put into place that make it so that Human Drivers are no longer able to drive on public streets. I believe that this will happen because machines never tire and are always at full attention, unlike we humans. There may be the occasional software or hardware malfunction but like I said yesterday we will start to build things that are much more resilient.

A negative to self-driving cars is that a lot of people will lose jobs. Why pay someone when you can have a machine do it for you safer? I believe that the job losses will spread from delivery jobs to Airplanes. Also, there will no longer need to be traffic cops as people will no longer be driving. 

There will however be an exception to the rule as there will still need to be beat cops that patrol the streets. I believe that their cars can still be mostly automated with the ability for a human to take control. 

With cars driving themselves we will get places quicker and our productivity will rise. Cars will be able to drive extremely close to each other and at much higher speeds than we would drive them. This would mean that the way we make highways or even regular streets would change. Even then automated cars could do most of the street work on their own.

Automation will boom. This will not only affect our cars but it will affect our stores and our restaurants. I don’t see many people going to the store as often because a machine delivering the goods will likely be much faster. All restaurants will have delivery and you will get the food within minutes of ordering it. Cooking is brought down to time frames and specific amounts of ingredients. Computers are extremely good at specifics and will cook food nearly perfect every time. I can see pictures of people’s food being taken automatically during each step of the cooking process. This will mean that machine accountability will be top of the line.

This means a lot of jobs in the food industry and shopping industry will turn into factories rather than stores. There might still be malls and places that people can go for “the shopping experience” and “social experience”.  But with technology advancing there will likely be a virtual way to experience shopping like we do today.

This will lead to a lot of poverty but with the lack of humans working on this menial stuff I can see laws being put into place to make company’s help pay for human education.

This could lead to a Resource Based Economy and a complete restructuring of our cities. But I really don’t want to get into that right now, we’ll save that for another day.

There are some factors that could hold this technology back. Some examples are perhaps malfunctions that cause mass injury or people just being cautious and or superstitious. 

My outlook on the world is positive and I often push for others to have a more positive outlook on life too. Otherwise, my Mom would give me that stern look, squint slightly, and tell me not to be negative. I do however try my best to be as realistic as possible.

I hope you like this one and hope to see you again.