What's Your Most Controversial Technical Opinion?

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3 points·glhaynes··8 comments

That autonomous cars represent a far greater and more darkly Orwellian threat to human liberty than anything the NSA could cook up. Probably.

The only reason I can see this being construed as controversial is because people haven't been reading the headlines for the past few years.

Why require a kill switch when you can just order the car to drive it's occupants to the closest correction facility?

It's not even that - frightening though that is.

Consider what universal adoption of autonomous cars would suggest about the role of the individual versus the collective - what the sociological implications are to that degree of control being imposed on the way people physically move, and the way they make decisions about where they go. The whole premise that people can't be trusted to manage their own autonomy beyond walking distance without being mollycoddled by an AI (and by extension, inevitably, the state) is just creepy.

And i'm saying this as a vile statist pig. It's a little much.

You're right, the implications are huge.

Unless these advancements are specifically designed to put full control in the hands of the owner of the vehicle and no outside intervention possible then your fears will most certainly come true.

The more technology integrates with us the less freedom we have and the stupider we become.

That checked exceptions aren't nearly the boondoggle they're made out to be.

evidently that MVC is the wrong method for working in the client, also that AngularJS is awful and the php/drupal of our near future.

so I'm hoping it turns out I basically have no controversial opinions is what I'm saying.

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