I Like to Lead When I Dance
I basically read social media, particularly Facebook, to understand how well balanced and emotionally healthy I am (and that I’m not paranoid). On Linkedin, somebody is trying to demonstrate that driverless cars will take over in the near future. (Of course, if you use I95 at all, many of those cars seem driverless at the moment.)
Remember when computers would create a “paperless office” and a “chuckles society”? All our computers do is spew out paper, and the check printing people are having banner years. Business and society are like rheostats, not “on/off” switches. We may have driverless cars, just as we have fast food restaurants. But traditional restaurants and traditional cars haven’t and won’t disappear.
America, of course, is an automotive culture. During rush hour, bring on mass transport in any form possible. But outside of commuting, people seek autonomy. They like to make decisions, to feel in control, and to experience tactile interactions. Newspapers have diminished, but they’re still widely sold and read. Ebooks had a bigger decline in the market than did hard copy books a year ago.
Life is about choices, nor blind conformance. Remember the Olympics in China opened by ten thousand people pounding the same drums in the same way? That wasn’t impressive, it was frightening. I looked around my quite unique, idiosyncratic, personalized surroundings and said, “Thank God!”
People still go to conventional movies, still line up for amusement park rides, still wait for a seat in their favorite eating places. To me, a driverless car is like a pre-chewed meal.
Yuk.
