The world is changing fast and sometimes I hear about something in real life that I didn’t think even existed yet, outside of science fiction. For instance, one of my students a couple of days ago was talking about her experiments in college, separating strands of DNA, which she seemed to
Knight Rider is coming
think was a fairly normal thing. To me, it implies designer human beings. Sort of like Frankenstein, in theory, but looking more like George Clooney, or a young Britney Spears.
Then today, I saw something weird on Jalopnik. I’m not a car person, not even slightly, I much prefer traveling by bus or train, but this piqued my interest. Self-driven cars. Some day, I’m sure, they will be common. We have computers, which are smarter and more logical than humans, and lack the human traits of panic and road rage. We have cameras, which can be attached to computers. We have GPS that can tell the computer where it is in the world, and radar which can tell a car where it is relative to the car in front of it. So, I suppose it’s only a matter of time.
But I didn’t realize they were actually here, until I read this article about the world’s 1st crash of a driverless car. A minor crash, by some accounts, a 4 car pile up by others. Fortunately, no serious injuries. It does raise a lot of questions, though. Who is responsible? The “driver,” who is really the owner/passenger, the manufacturer, the programmer or the other driver on the grounds that computers can’t make mistakes? In this case it was pretty clear that the driverless car was at fault because it hit the other car from behind, but still…
I think this is an inevitable development, but there are apparently still some bugs to work out. And I still think we should be focusing more on public transportation.
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