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This is the kind of technology I've been yearning for all my driving life. Sure, it is still many years off, but at least I can now have a glimmer of hope that it will be available to me in my lifetime.
Imagine getting in your car, telling it where you want to go, and then sitting back and relaxing, maybe taking a nap, or getting an early start on your day's work. You don't have to worry about getting in an accident because your car and every other car out there are driving themselves around, without the flaws of human judgment.
One potential downside? Maybe technology (coupled with ubiquitous ultra-high-speed internet) this will encourage people to commute farther to work. After all, if you can do a lot of your work, or anything else, while driving, the driving doesn't seem like so much of a waste of time.
Of course, some will say that this technology will ultimately become fairly useless, as the promise of affordable flying cars starts to look more like a reality (see companies like Moller for more info on the future of flying cars). The concept would be the same, as you tell it where you want to go and then sit back, but the challenges of navigating through roads in the sky will be much less difficult than navigating around on the ground.
But the idea of using your driving time to do something enjoyable or productive is so alluring, that we can hardly afford not to reach for it. So raise a glass to the computer chauffeurs of tomorrow. And hope he doesn't crash as often as the computers of today.
