But in the end, people went ahead and developed more and more infrastructure for the internet regardless, and now most people couldn't live without it.
I'd just read Kurzweil's book and I remember saying they'll probably have one by 2010-2011 because smart phones will be the free phones by then. I was right for one simple reason: Most people tend to dismiss new tech right up to when it stops becoming a luxury item. As soon as people find value in something and they can afford it, adoption is practically inevitable.
I hope my self driving car has a nice sleeper option so I can take long road trips and wake up at my destination.
People don't know what they want, so we'll make them want it.
Of course this does not confirm that tablets are falling out of favour - they could simply have reached their saturation point. Does anybody know if saturation sales are expected to look like this normalish (gaussianish) graph?
[0] http://www.statista.com/statistics/269915/global-apple-ipad-...
[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/272070/global-tablet-ship...
things changed when a computer appeared that people really liked to carry. The same wait is here - for the iPhone of autonomous cars. What right now drives around in Mountain View seems to be more like HP Treo.
This does not need any shiny packaging to be a no brainer. It's a drop dead delicious invention.
That some even entertain the notion that they don't want one goes to show how clueless people are. They are just saying what they think everyone else thinks, without engaging thier brain.
The enjoyment of driving is not about human warmth, it's about control and adrenaline. I don't think the comparison makes sense. I'd be more excited about autonomous cars if I could turn it off in the country (as some cars today allow) for recreation.
I definitely agree with what you're saying—I know I'm probably in the minority for enjoying driving at all—but I frankly can't imagine anyone enjoying reading their credit card over the phone.
Is Waze for horses patentable?
The US laws are crazy: http://duiwise.com/dui-dwi-answers/can-you-get-a-dui-dwi-on-...
For how many of those 46 minutes do you think they are enjoying control and adrenaline? I would guess approximately zero, and once you tell them that they can spend that time instead surfing the internet, or eating breakfast, or videochatting with their family, they will.
[1] http://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/new-study-reveals-much-motor...
Any transit system I've ever used was:
Over crowded.
Purposefully designed so no-one could sleep. Also, I really wouldn't want to sleep on an artificially created publicly shared surface.
Frowned upon to talk on your cell phone, or eat a meal.
I definitely couldn't get any work done, even if I tried.
(hi; I live in a city run by "fiscal conservatives")
This is exactly what makes autonomous vehicles so great - they eliminate the public transportation problem.
The bus is not a great place to do any of the things mentioned above.
But this is a great illustration of self-driving cars: it's public transit for the upper-middle class. (The middle class can't afford a reliable car for the whole household; the rich have chauffeurs.)
When autonomous cars are ubiquitous, the price of insuring your thrill ride will be roughly equivalent to the hourly price of an amusement park.
Long before "automonous cars are ubiquitous" something else is going to happen - automatic collision detection and prevention will become ubiquitous, long before all cars are fully automatic. So even if I drive the car myself, it will be very difficult to crash, therefore the insurance will have no reason to increase.
Either way, I am sure fully automatic cars won't become ubiquitous in our lifetimes no matter what manufacturers say, so I'm not too worried.
Why assume that you won't be able to? Even the most elaborately "uncarlike" self-driving car concepts have a steering wheel hidden somewhere, for the simple reason that there's always the chance of some extreme conditions that a self-driving car can't navigate.
1. For minor uncertainty, the car could ask what to do. For example, the user might confirm that an object blocking the road is harmless and can be run over or bumped out of the way. This is not real-time; the car only asks after it comes to a stop.
2. The above can be done by remote humans.
3. When the car is really confused, you should get power assistance while you stand outside and push. It should be possible to push the car up any San Francisco hill with just one person. Put your hands on the bumper, press hard, and the car responds to the pressure. Unlike traditional car pushing, the steering should respond. You should be able to parallel park, park on grass, force the car up onto the sidewalk a bit, go the wrong direction, and so on.
Because the attractive argument for driverless cars that makes sense (to me) is that they're safer than human drivers. Presumably at some point humans will not be allowed to drive anymore.
That was before they turned calling up a company into an audio version of the 90's internet.
This stopped happening because humans are expensive, not because typing numbers into a 2 inch touchscreen keyboard is actually a better experience.
If I can do something myself, in 5 mins, inconveniently, for free.
Or spend 5 mins on a phone call, waiting for a human to do the same thing, for $10.
I would call the latter a poor user experience.
That's what we mean by "calling someone to book a flight" i.e. an agent who will take your request and do the legwork. Not simply talking to someone at a call center and dictating everything you'd otherwise be typing into an online form.
In my own opinion, being a passenger in a self-driving vehicle wouldn't be riskier than being a passenger in a normal vehicle. On the contrary, I think it's safer. But there's the issue of how human drivers might behave or be forced to behave once self-driving cars become widespread.
What if human drivers' become more trusting of other cars' behavior and start paying less attention? Human drivers might become involved in worse crashes between themselves.
What if there's an adverse selection effect? If the public is convinced that self-driving cars are safer for individual passengers, then the most risk-averse drivers might be more likely to join in, leaving less risk-averse (and prone to accident) drivers on the road.
How would human drivers interact with platoons? What if a human driver is stuck in a suddenly decelerating platoon? Would he panic and swerve? Would he crash?
My point is that there might be all kinds of unforeseen consequences. Maybe good, maybe bad. That's reason why I'm not particularly enthusiastic about self-driving cars (or anything else for that matter): we'll only know whether it's good or bad in hindsight.