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Comment by gbro3n | Hacker News Reader

I think a good analogy is people not being able to work on modern cars because they are too complex or require specialised tools. True I can still go places with my car, but when it goes wrong I'm less likely to be able to resolve the problem without (paid for) specialised help.

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And just like modern vehicles rob the user of autonomy, so too for coding agents. Modern tech moves further and further away from empowering normal people and increasingly serves to grow the influence of corporations and governments over our day to day lives.

It's not inherent, but it is reality unless folks stop giving up agency for convenience. I'm not holding my breath.

Cars are actually a good metaphor, it works on so many levels. Modern cars have "democratized" access to long-distance travel in a sense, and most people don't need to do any heavy maintenance themselves. But the flipside is that places that have adopted it have become "car dependent" and build cities assuming access to cars.

Are we net better off than if we didn't have cars and simply built public transport with walkable cities?

Soon enough we'll have ads playing in our cars at stoplights.

https://www.carscoops.com/2025/02/jeep-owners-complain-about...

We have that now for most people, the radio. But hopefully we will be in a llm self driving car and can get ads for the entire trip.

That is a very possible reality. Pay extra for no ads or a reduced cost trip if you consent to having your eyeballs held open while separate ads are played to each eyeball.

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