Intellectual Stimulation and Psychological Trauma

I have found myself disinterested in TV, movies, and YouTube recently. I find that they haven’t been tickling my brain. I’ll often start some movie or TV show, and go to bed after 30 minutes, never to come back to it. Even the new Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones shows I only made halfway through each, and those are my wheelhouse.

Historically I have found political and futurist lectures or interviews to be the most compelling. But whereas I essentially “blame” myself for my disinterest in TV and movies, in this case I think I’m going to blame the lack of content. My main political draws in the past were Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, and others like them. Chomsky is obviously quite advanced in age so his commentary isn’t as insightful anymore. And Greenwald fell off the deep end quite a long time ago.

The futurist content has long been disappointing to me. I find that it is often quite shallow. If not that, it’s too specific on one small topic or too far in the future. I yearn for people speculating and debating in depth on 5-to-30-year time frames. I’ve looked quite a bit and haven’t found much.

I long ago lost interest in video games through no intentional act of my own.

I need to find something to scratch my intellectual itch. Maybe it’s spiritual exploration? Maybe it’s writing. Maybe it’s more in-depth reading. One problem with this last one is my time is quite limited. My time is really limited mostly to about 30-to-60-minute chunks after the kids are in bed. I’ve recently been running quite a lot more while trying to keep a baseline up on my powerlifting, so I have to go to bed early to get up for running, leaving little time to stay up at night. On a side note, I am hopeful that this, to me, “extreme” level of exercise has been very helpful in preventing my frequent headaches. I am hopeful, but the truth will be borne out by more time.

I could certainly do some in-depth reading during these 30-to 60-minute chunks. I am afraid that after a long day of exercise, work, family, and chores, it may feel like work instead of the relaxation that I may tell myself that I need. However in writing this all out I think I have convinced myself to give it a shot for a few nights and see how it makes me feel.

Topics of reading could be on AI, geopolitics, economics, or other things.

Now, on to the next topic on my mind tonight. I have thought this for several years now, but I really do wonder if the psychological damage done to me mostly by my son will turn out to be permanent in some way. I suppose I am still a stable and dependable person, and I have found my ways to cope with the daily trauma I experience. But I can’t help but wonder if many years down the line I will be suffering effects from this period in my life. I guess that’s what therapy is for, though.

Yearning for a Life

I yearn for a life of my own. My current weekdays are filled with taking care of the family and working. I get maybe an hour to myself at night.

I do go out with my friends once or twice per month for games, and I cherish that time. I feel some guilt about it though, because when I go out, my son is literally screaming, crying, hitting himself, and destroying things for most of the time (a few hours) that I am out.

Recently, my wife told me to not feel guilty about going out for game nights, or for my yearly work trip to Las Vegas. Despite all the chaos at home when I am gone, it gives them an opportunity to grow emotionally together. It does seem like a very painful way to grow emotionally, I’ll have to say. But her telling me that has eliminated most of my guilt about going out.

I crave more hobbies, though. I’d love to join an adult basketball league. Or start a progressive futurist meetup. Or learn artificial intelligence and math. Or exercise more. It’s possible that I’ll one day be able to pursue some of these things. But for now I’m limited. Although I feel some freedom from my wife’s reassurances recently, I still couldn’t be care-free with how I might spend my time, because it comes at a high cost to the family.

When my kids, and especially my son, are older, then I will be able to pursue my own interests more. The big question is: will that age be 10? 12? 21? I really don’t know.

I’m mostly at peace with this, even though I do crave personal freedom. I know I’m at peace with it, because I want more kids. If it was such a terrible situation, I would just say, “I’m DONE!”

But I guess I live to be a father. I love being able to bring my son some comfort when he is in such pain. Even though I bristle at the loss of freedom in the moment. I love being able to spend time with my daughter giving her reading and math lessons at age four. I can’t imagine many things more rewarding than that.

But I can still dream of a perfect life. I find value in dreaming. You can even dream of being single, without actually wanting it. When you dream of another version of your life in a parallel universe, you can then step back and think, now what are the things from that dream that I really love? And pull some of those things into your real life.

I recently dreamed of what it might be like to be retired. I dreamed of spending three hours per day exercising, another three hours learning, and a bunch of time cooking and napping.

Now, I’m not going to have three hours per day to exercise. But from that dream I realized that if I plan each day around my hectic schedule I can usually find time for a two-mile run and a one-hour weight lifting and physical therapy session. So, I get 20% of my dream, instead of 0%. Good progress!

The Struggle is Real

I’ve got nothing to write. But I figured I should write anyway. It’s a nice change from endless “nexting” on Feedly, Reddit, and Twitter.

I’ll spend minutes at a time downvoting low-effort post after low-effort post on Reddit. Minutes at a time hitting j on Feedly.

I definitely don’t take enough time to be mindful of how I’m spending my few idle minutes here and there.

My main chunk of “me” time is the hour between when the kids go to bed and when I go to bed.

I do make sure I do things for myself, though. I’m training for the half marathon in Tahoe in October.

But, when you’re the parent of a child who uniquely needs you, making time for yourself is a real challenge. To get in my six-mile runs, I wake up around 4:50 so I can get out the door by 5:15, so I can be back by 6:30 to make breakfast for the kids, pack lunch, keep the peace, and get them sent off on the bus.

Now my wife is gone for a few days and I won’t be able to do these runs, because I don’t think my kids are quite ready to wake up and not find a parent in the house.

But, something else I did for myself: I got myself my fourth tattoo. A kick-ass unicorn on my chest! And this time it didn’t hurt nearly as much as when I had my back done. I actually have one more session to finish the unicorn. Then pictures shall be forthcoming.

Really, I don’t think I’ll be able to fully embrace my passions though until the kids are at least a few years older. And, I just have to accept that. I need to remember to enjoy these years while the kids are still young. I do enjoy spending time with them, doing family events, and taking care of them.

Until next time!

Getting Back to my Roots

I think it is super cool that I’ve had this blog for 16 years. And it’s super sad that my posting cadence has slowed down to once or twice per year for the past five+ years.

I feel like I need to get back to my roots.

To some degree I never left my roots. One aspect of myself that I have never abandoned is my love for basketball. I have watched basketball my entire life. Every once in a while, I get some sense that I should stop watching basketball because it is a waste of time. But, really, it’s a core part of who I am, isn’t it? And I have never stopped being silly, singing silly songs about the dog, and telling silly jokes. Sometimes I feel that I shouldn’t embarrass myself in that way. But you know what is embarrassing? Not being yourself.

In some other ways I have certainly gotten away from my roots. Twelve-year-old me would certainly be disappointed that I haven’t played organized basketball in over 20 years. My god, man! What were you thinking!

But there’s also plenty of other things that I don’t do that previous versions of myself would be astonished — aghast even — that I don’t do anymore. I don’t go to drum and bass shows. I don’t play video games.

Other stuff is stuff that I have never lived up to. I remember in elementary school, getting mostly As and a B or two. And after the quarter was over, saying to myself, OK, this is the quarter where I absolutely will get straight As. Perfect homework, perfect studying. And of course it wouldn’t happen. But I was still fine, obviously, at least in that respect. But there is a lingering disappointment of all the hundreds of little promises that I have made to myself and betrayed over the years.

And yet, here I am. Beautiful, caring, wise wife. Talented, loving children. I’ve always wanted a family. Twelve-year-old me would be proud. Nice house. Great job. So, I shouldn’t beat myself up. I’m doing great!

Yet, I’m not living up to what I should be. From the little things — can’t I stick to doing some chin-ups on work breaks during the day, rather than mashing the “skip break” button? — to the big(ger) things — can’t I break out of watching TV at night when the kids go to bed, and instead do some form of meditation?

But we all deserve to cut ourselves some slack. And, yet, we all owe it to ourselves to really try to live up to the person that we want to be.

Personal Growth

I am really proud of myself for becoming the strongest and most muscular of my life during this pandemic. For the few years leading up to the pandemic, I got into basic barbell strength training, then considered taking a more bodybuilding approach, and ultimately decided to focus on pure raw strength, specifically powerlifting. When the pandemic hit and I realized that it was going to be months, not weeks (little did I know it would be more than a year), I knew that I had to figure out how to continue my powerlifting at home. It was a new-ish hobby of mine, and if I just let it fall by the wayside, it would essentially mean that I was no longer doing something that was purely for myself. For my own self-worth, I needed to have that thing that I would do for myself.

The rest of the country decided to buy fitness equipment at about the same time, so it was a bit difficult to get the stuff, but with enough persistence I pieced together the equipment I needed. So this whole year I have pretty consistently been doing my lifting. I have gotten bigger, stronger, and I feel good about myself and what I have achieved. Last year, I even participated in a virtual powerlifting competition. I came in last (of three) in my age and sex category, but that’s OK.

Despite having adopted this healthy habit and achieved the improvements that came with it, I find myself wanting more. Yes, more progress on physical achievements, like a running habit and increased flexibility. But more than that, I want to grow my spirituality, emotional well-being, mindfulness, willpower, intellectual pursuits, and conscious leisure activities. I know each of these things will take a similar amount of commitment that my growth in physical strength has taken. So I have to keep reminding myself of that.

I am 37 years old. Just continuing to “think of” myself as a mindfulness-aligned, spiritual-seeking, intellectual person does not make it so. I have to actively pursue these goals and others. Aside from putting in the work, I need to make room for that. I need to slowly shed non-core responsibilities, so that I have more room (primarily time, but also mental context switching) for personal growth.

I have been “wanting” to cultivate a mindfulness practice for at least ten years now. And by “mindfulness practice,” I mean even just ten minutes of meditation per day. Of course, that would just be the start. But even that start, I have never begun for more than a few days. So how much do I “want” it? That is what I need to prove to myself by taking steps to make it possible.

I also find a certain amount of sadness in, for instance, finishing a day of work plus other responsibilities, to walk to get the mail and realize that I have hardly been outside all day on a beautiful day. It’s not that work alone prevents me from getting outside. More that a combination of other responsibilities after work as well as a lack of sufficient willpower to take advantage of little 10- or 15-minute blocks of time together prevents me from getting outside, or whatever my “conscious leisure” activity might be.

All of this is to say that I only live once, and simply floating from day to day, week to week, month to month, season to season, year to year, without putting in sufficient conscious effort in designing my life, cultivating my spirit, sculpting my body, caressing my relationships, appreciating my intellect, and fully experiencing life, will be a disappointment to say the least. We only live once, and we must grab life by the horns and ride it for all that it’s worth.

Happy New Year!

My resolution for 2021 is to get organized. There’s many things I hope to accomplish in life, and being organized isn’t one of them really. But being organized allows me to more easily accomplish my other goals, and brings peace and harmony to my life. Specifically, and most importantly, I am mostly referring to my house. I want my house to be mostly picked up and tidy the whole year.

I’m going to make a video tour of my house today, and at the beginning of every month, to mark the progress.

Anxiety

Wow. I haven’t felt this much anxiety for quite some time. Two people close to me are exhibiting mild symptoms that could be COVID-19. One of them is older, so that’s more dangerous. The other is much closer to me, so that’s much more worrying.

My kids’ school was just cancelled for a month straight. A month. I’ve never heard of anything like that in my life. It could be that two months from now we’ll mostly be back to normal. But more likely is we’ll be four months from now and two million Americans will have died from this shit and I’ll know several of them. There’s almost certainly going to be a recession as a result if not a depression. My feeling right now is to not go anywhere. Don’t go out to eat, don’t go to the gym. Maybe other people aren’t there yet with this same feeling but they will be within a few days probably. Lots of people aren’t going to be able to pay their bills, they’re not going to be able to be paid.

I can’t shake the feeling that this is going to be a life altering moment. Nothing will be as it was supposed to be after this. I can’t shake the feeling that this is just becoming a pattern of one fucked up thing after another. For years now here we’ve been dealing with nearby wildfire, our town covered in smoke for days at a time, whole towns in the region wiped off the map. Just a few months ago our power went out for days at a time. Living by candle light, working for a technology company by battery backup and Internet by cell phone hot spot. Whole refrigerators of food thrown away.

Now this COVID-19. And what’s after this? Probably the depression or recession that I mentioned. After that? I can foresee civil unrest, food shortages, more wildfire. I want to think that I am just worrying unnecessarily but I really don’t think I am.

One thing I need to take away from this assuming I get to the other side of this crisis as an unbroken man is to live up to the full potential of my intellect. I am disappointed in myself that it wasn’t until just about two days ago that I really understood the full gravity of this situation. I didn’t understand the severity of this disease as far as its fatality rate, the rapidity of its spreading, the effects of it on the economy, and its effect on everyday life. I could, if I chose, put a large amount of blame for this on the inadequacy of messaging on the subject. I saw a dearth of messaging answering the question of “why is this a big deal?” But the real blame should be on myself for not proactively researching this issue to really understand it. I won’t be so unprepared in the future. Yesterday I felt lucky that there was no shortage of rice and beans at the co-op. They had been stacking them by the front door for a week. And I didn’t wonder to think what would cause them to put such a display by the front door. It could have just as easily been empty by the time I looked, and my unpreparedness would have been the cause of that failure for my family.

The second takeaway from this is that life is short. I’m not going to waste my time on inconsequential shit. I’m going to accomplish important things in life, like making a real difference on issues of justice, and being an effective leader in these areas. I’m going to make real progress in becoming the man I want to be and treating myself and my family right. Because life is too short to do otherwise.

Technology Smorgasborg

I’m trying to find the right medium to write on. First I started a blog that I thought was anonymous but it followed me around the web based on my email address.

Then I tried to write a career-related post on LinkedIn but it limited me to 700 characters. Screw that.

A recent interview of Matt Mullenweg (sp?) inspired me to write on this blog some more. I’ve had this blog for over ten years I believe. The nice thing about an anonymous blog is that I could write what’s on my mind without fearing hurting anyone’s feelings.

I think with this blog I’ll take a middle ground. First of all I’ll write less about personal things, but secondly I’ll allow myself to be a little more open about my personal things when I do write about them.

OK, now that that’s out of the way! What I really want to write about is my technology learning experience. I left the farm a month and a half ago. (Has it really been that long? Wow!) Since then I have been spending my days learning. Surprisingly, I think I might have already found a job through an old college friend, but that hasn’t officially started yet. Until it does start, I am treating learning technology as my job. I’ve enjoyed learning python, R, machine learning, and now ASP.NET. When I do start my job, I will need to make sure I set aside dedicated time just for learning.

I want to have a full tool belt at my disposal. I want to be “beginner OReilly book” capable at dozens of technologies, and I want to be expert level at a few. I also want to get on the ground floor of a new technology. Something like Rust would be interesting to learn in this regard. And lastly, I want to contribute seriously to an open source project.

I am legitimately excited to be learning and using technology every day again!

Thought Themes

I have noticed that over the past few years, perhaps since we moved to Nevada City, that I have had certain themes in my thought. I think that maybe having a stable place that we are living, in contrast to our vagabond lifestyle in 2012, allows me to be more introspective.

One of my favorite times of day is often laying in bed before I go to sleep. I am usually a belly sleeper, and I find that if I lay on my back at bed time that I do a lot more thinking for some reason. During these times I tend to think of whatever theme has been dominating my thoughts for the past few months.

My themes tend to last for months at a time.

For a while, after reading Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near, my thoughts have been on the radical artificial intelligence future. In my view (to steal a Bernie-ism), Kurzweil is far too optimistic. It may be that his Utopian future does come to pass. However, I am cautious about putting so much optimism in our AI overlords. We have very real problems to worry about before artificial super intelligence arrives to save us all. Relying so much on AI to save us seems to be a gamble. What if we screw ourselves over with climate change before AI has reached its full potential? This concern is completely separate from the existential threats that Nick Bostrom raises in his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostrom’s example of a paperclip optimizing AI turning the entire Earth, all of its life, and beyond, into a massive amount of paperclips reads like something out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but in my mind it is an entirely plausible example.

Mostly as I lay in bed at night thinking about these things, I am thinking in the context of imagining what my own life will be like in certain scenarios. In the case of an intelligence explosion, it is hard to imagine what my life might be like in 50 years. In that time, we might have uploaded our brains onto a digital medium. In Kurzweil’s examples, the entire universe could be one big computer. How could I possibly conceive of what life might be like in this situation? Rather, I think more in the shorter term. I think about driverless cars and how that would affect daily life. But more importantly I think about how it would affect my profession of farmer. AI will probably take over the thousands-of-acres commodity farms first. The wheat and soybean farms will be largely automated. Eventually, however, AI will come for the small vegetable farms as well. What will it do to my sense of self when machines exist to the degree that I show up one day and find that all there is for me to do is sit in a lawn chair and drink a beer? An AI-powered machine will be planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, washing, packing, and delivering my produce all more efficiently than I could ever dream of doing myself. That first day of sitting in a lawn chair, drinking a beer, and watching the machines do all the work on the farm might indeed be glorious. But I doubt the 50th day will be glorious.

I do believe that humans have a need to feel needed in this world. If I feel that there is no work that I could do that is truly useful, that no one in my town is expecting anything of me, that no one will notice if I don’t show up for work, I can say personally that that will be a huge blow to my sense of self-worth. I imagine the same will be true for many other people, and I think that AI is coming for other people’s jobs a lot sooner than mine. What will happen to the tens of millions of truck drivers, accountants, lawyers, journalists, and others, who will be put out of work by AI? I think we could be facing a huge mental health crisis in this country.

I do think that will adequate planning we can mitigate the problems that might arise as AI gets more and more powerful. But given the current state of politics in this country, I don’t have high hopes that we will tackle this problem proactively.

Next time on my blog, we can talk about Buddhism!

The Coming Robot Revolution, Part One: Driverless Cars

It is time to start writing on this blog again. All of my blogging energy has gone into stuandmags.net, and now that Mags and I have decided to settle down in Nevada City, California, it is time to do more writing, which is more what this blog is about.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about the coming advances in robot and artificial intelligence technologies, and how much change these advances will bring about in our economy, transportation systems, and personal lives. My thinking has been stimulated and prompted by a piece by 60 Minutes on robots in the workplace, and a series of articles in Forbes about the Google Driverless Cars.

I think it is most clear what the impacts of the Google Driverless Cars will be, and that is the subject of this first post. Very quickly, this new technology will turn every part of our transportation system on its head.

First and foremost, in most respects driverless cars will be a huge boon to street safety for all users. Collisions between two driverless cars will be virtually non-existent, as the cars will be in constant communication with each other. The algorithms and sensors controlling the cars will have much quicker reaction times and much lower error rate than any human driver.

These algorithms will be required to follow all traffic laws. This will be a huge plus for all sorts of streets, but especially in cities. As a cyclist, I look forward to the days when cars will properly yield and merge, and not double park.

Even for the clueless, iPhone-wielding pedestrian will driverless cars be a great advance in safety. Even the best algorithms and sensors can’t bring a car to a dead stop in no time, but a driverless car could begin perfect evasive and slowing maneuvers the second a pedestrian steps into the road. This extra half second and use of perfect technique will avoid many collisions with all road users, no matter who is at fault, and when collisions do occur they will be much less likely to be fatal.

Perhaps the greatest advance in street safety will be the elimination of drunk driving. There will still be plenty of dolts who decide to drive themselves home when they have a driverless car option, but most drunks will opt to let the car drive them home. Drunk driving is a huge problem, as we all know, and I think it is a problem that will eventually be close to eliminated.

The entire car ownership model will be turned on its head. Many people will choose out of habit or pride to still own their own car, driverless or not, but more and more people will realize the great economic benefit of simply renting a driverless car on demand, paid hourly and/or by the mile. If you live in a city or suburb, you will be able to request a car to pick you up, and a car without anyone in it will drive itself to your front door within minutes. Most people will opt for this option over owning their own car, especially young people and city dwellers.

With near perfect utilization of a fleet of driverless cars, many fewer cars will need to be produced. This will be a giant shock wave to the auto industry. The vehicle fleet will eventually fall to 10% of what it is today, since cars will rarely be vacant, save for the times like 3am when most people don’t want to go anywhere anyway. This change alone will be disruptive to many economies, especially the United States, Japan, and Germany. A smart auto maker will realize this change is inevitable and get out ahead of the change. Half or more of current auto makers will fold within the next few decades as demand vanishes.

With far fewer cars sitting idle, giant parking lots will become a thing of the past, as will many areas of street parking. This will be a great thing for bicycle infrastructure, sidewalk widening, and using old parking lots for things like parks and public gardens. This will also cause business real estate prices to drop, as many huge parking lots will now be open to development for business use. Indeed, even streets themselves will be able to be significantly narrowed as driverless cars will be able to follow each other with just inches to spare. This narrowing and removal of car travel lanes will present even more opportunities for more sidewalks and bicycle infrastructure.

Again, driving will be much more efficient, and I mean an improvement by leaps and bounds. Gone will be the days of constant traffic jams due to irrational driving behavior, collisions, and inefficient use of road surfaces. Because driverless cars will be in constant communication with each other, they can follow each other within inches, braking instantly as needed, and gaining a huge boost in wind drag efficiency due to drafting. This huge increase in efficiency will make our current freeways look downright silly as most of the road surface will be completely empty while other parts will be crammed with cars safely going 100 miles per hour. Rather than our current ridiculous trend of widening freeways, we’ll actually contract them and save bundles on maintenance costs.

As you will be able to instantly get a personal vehicle sent to your location at any time, equipped with a computerized chauffeur, public transit will go through a huge change. Many public bus lines will be eliminated, and where they are kept the drivers will be replaced by computers and sensors. Some people will have their driverless car memberships subsidized by local government so the costs to them will be comparable to their current subsidized transit passes.

Other types of transit will show resiliency as they offer speed advantages over cars with rubber tires on asphalt and cement. Airplanes and eventually high-speed rail will be used when you need to get somewhere more quickly or more comfortably than a driverless car can get you there. However, routes like San Francisco to Los Angeles will greatly shrink as people can do the route in 3.5 hours using a driverless car at 100 miles per hour, without having to deal with the indignities and delays of airports. Air travel and high-speed rail will mostly be used for trips of 500 miles and more, and of course trips across the oceans. I don’t see good local trains and subways going away any time soon, as in many cases they are already such a fast and efficient way to travel.

Even many of our errands will be turned on their heads. You’ll be able to place an order on the web to the grocery store, and a car with no one in it will arrive at your house at the appointed time with your order. Your package deliveries will also arrive in a driverless vehicle at appointed times. A driverless car will arrive to take kids to school.

Taxi drivers will of course resist this entire endeavor, and of course I feel for them. But, honestly, resistance is futile. It is not a matter of if the taxi driver profession will be almost entirely wiped out, but simply a question of when.

Unfortunately, with the increases in efficiency, cost, speed, and convenience, many people will actually increase the amount of time they spend in cars. People won’t mind living two hours away from their job as much when they can work, read, eat, and drink from their moving car. Unfortunately this all equates to more time people will spend sitting on their asses, increasing incidences of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

Driverless cars will be the push that electric cars needed. When it is a computer rather than a human worrying about how, when, and where to charge, many companies will make the switch. Gasoline combustion engines will still have a significant role for longer trips, but for shorter trips electric cars will rule the day. This will be a significant advance in air quality and engine noise.

However, another form of noise will surely increase: that of cars moving at 100 miles per hour regardless of any engine noise. This background “wooshing” noise can travel for many miles, and I think it will increase as there are more cars moving at a faster speed at any given time.

Google already has working prototypes of the driverless car, and I think within three to five years we will start seeing them on the roads. In that time frame they may still be out of reach for most private owners, but they will start to be used for car sharing, where people can share the costs of these expensive cars, currently estimated to cost $300,000. The car sharing model will be the one that eventually comes to dominate, anyway. Costs for these cars will rapidly fall until they start to approach the price of current human-operated cars, and as the prices fall these things will really start to take off. I feel that most people have no idea what huge changes in transportation are on the horizon but soon enough everyone will know about it.

Despite this lengthy blog post detailing the many changes I expect to see, I am not necessarily a full advocate of driverless cars; I just think that these changes are inevitable. Overall, I think the changes will be a net positive over our current transportation system, mostly due to the huge advances in street safety for all users. However, we need to be aware of the significant drawbacks, some of which I have addressed above.

The biggest downside I see to driverless cars is that it will make it much more tempting to not engage in active transportation. Cycling, walking, and combining these modes with public transportation are currently attractive to many people because of the cost and convenience compared to private automobile ownership, especially in cities. As using driverless cars becomes inexpensive enough, many people will start to use the service and miss out on the significant health benefits that active transportation provides. In fact, I think cyclists and walkers will increasingly be seen as quaint and behind the times. The social and economic pressures to travel by driverless car will be great.

People who choose to not own a cell phone will probably be left in the dust, as they will be needed to get picked up anywhere you don’t have access to a computer.

As people are no longer in control of their own motion, they will lose touch with their sense of direction, even more than they already have with smart phones and GPS. People will lose the sense of connectedness of places as they will pay less attention to the geography between points A and B.

As active transportation decreases and public transportation shrinks, we will become more atomized as individuals than we already are. When you get picked up and dropped off door-to-door in an encapsulated vehicle, you interact less with people. The driverless deliveries will have the same effect as you no longer interact with people at the grocery store. However, you may be able to easily choose to carpool in a driverless car which would increase your interaction with people.

As it stands now, the easiest way to limit the adverse effects of car culture for yourself is to simply not own a car. It is a big, expensive decision to own a car and therefore you can easily stick with your original decision to not do so. However, when a car lifestyle is a simple web form and $50 membership fee away, it will be much more difficult to remain true to your decision to not own a car.

There will be impediments to the widespread adoption of the driverless car. These impediments will come in the form of cultural resistance, mostly from conservatives, resistance from the auto industry, and from lawmakers scared of change. These impediments are real, but at most they will slow but not stop the driverless car. Resistance is futile, for better or for worse.