From: KEVINRBECK

Date: 4/20/17

I APPEAR TO BE THE ODD ONE OUT

I like to observe human nature and people’s responses to technology promise. Reading their views, perceptions and prophecies. 

I also observe the celebrity, and public pronouncements, of the “next best thing” Founder, the handful of Masters of the Universe, and their perceptions of the world, and its complexities, and what their influence might be and what they think they are capable of? 

What are the capabilities, and future synthesising skills, of advisers, and experts, do they have at their side, and employ, examining the detail and plotting every possibility?

To my mind, it appears that many companies do not actually have expertise of this kind. Perhaps the advisers are chosen for their specific traits, tech heads and developers, all swept up in the euphoria of the Founder’s vision and the company’s objectives. 

Who can tell?

Did Mark Zuckerberg, and his strategists and advisers, ever perceive that when they went on their adventure in India, as part of Mr Zuckerberg’s altruistic virtues, to give the “poor people of the world” the Internet and the possibility of Community”, that they would be sent packing?

Image: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-safe-to-browse-the-dark-web

“The web may be lovely, dark, and deep, but most of us don’t actually venture very far into it. Back in 2013, Nielsen reported Americans visited an average of 90 different domains per person each month. That’s a startlingly low number—equivalent to about three domains each day—and one that crept down over the years, even as people spend more and more time online overall. I suspect the average person visits even fewer domains today, as tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google increasingly design interfaces—walled gardens of engagement and advertising—aimed at discouraging their users from visiting other sites.

That’s part of what’s so interesting about the recent decision by officials in India to block what’s called “zero-rating” or “sponsored data”— the practice of exempting certain kinds of Internet use from counting toward a person’s data plan. The move effectively bans a Facebook program called Free Basics, a suite of lightweight versions of popular sites—including, of course, Facebook—that don’t eat up data the way visiting other mobile sites does. The idea is to give people an affordable way to get online, but it has long been criticized by advocates for net neutrality as a way of giving an unfair advantage to certain websites.

Image: http://www.rediff.com/money/slide-show/slide-show-1-how-internet-is-creating-jobs-worldwide/20110527.htm

If you offer only a certain group of websites for free, the argument goes, doesn’t that give an unfair advantage to those sites? You don’t have to actively block or throttle your competitors to destroy them. (Free Basics is billed as open, meaning anyone can add their website to the platform, but Facebook still sets the guidelines that dictate use.)Then again, if you have a choice between a Facebook-curated mini-Internet and no Internet at all, isn’t something better than nothing? Maybe not…In a Facebook post on Monday, Zuckerberg wrote that he is “disappointed” but committed to keep working toward connectivity goals in India. In his earlier essay, for the Times of India, he was less restrained: “Who could possibly be against this?” (Facebook suffers a blow from regulators in India, proving that the fight for an open web is more than an abstraction, Adrienne LaFrance, February 9, 2016)

I now turn my attention to Self-Driving Cars (with a human at the wheel) or the Driverless Vehicle

Image: http://blog.cayenneapps.com/2016/06/13/self-driving-cars-swot-analysis/

I wonder whether those who believe that driverless cars will be here in their lifetime or that such is a given, have thought about all of the possible barriers, obstructions, outcomes and unexpected consequences? 

For that matter do the corporations developing these products consider the same and their likely impact of their corporate ventures on economy, and societies, across the world?

I think not.

Image: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140902160834-13117389-corporate-dyslexia-systems-blindness

I have come to the opinion that in relation to technology particularly, but perhaps in general, there is some form of “myopia”” or “reality blindness” that besets corporations and shareholders who are beavering away in their own worlds. Not too many seem to me to be be able to look beyond the horizon at anything that is a possible reality rather than a mythical fantasy. This unexplained affliction may be one of the side effects of apps and a herd mentality that the Internet conquers all?

“Self-driving cars have been discussed for years, but now that the government is drafting legislation for their arrival on British roads, conversation is moving away from if, to when, and what the impact might be.

Today’s cars already feature many driver-assistance features, ranging from cruise control and lane control to temporary self-steering. Within perhaps a decade, approval could be given for cars that are completely autonomous and take passengers from A to B while they Skype the office or write a sales report.

Nick Reed, academy director of the Transport Research Laboratory believes self-driving cars will not only have the potential to be far safer than today’s vehicles, they will greatly reduce the need to own a car. While many cars will likely be made available through taxi-like rental services, those which do belong to a company or individual will be able to multitask for them throughout the day.” (Sean Hargrave, April, 2017, the Guardian)


Litigation lawyers will be in a quandary, along with with the courts, as they seek to determine who is liable in an accident, injury or death?

“If anything about driverless cars can be considered an old riddle it is this one: the car is driving itself down a residential street when a woman pushing a baby stroller suddenly enters a crosswalk. Unable to stop, should the car's computer opt to hit mother and child, or veer off to strike a tree, almost certainly killing its passengers?

That macabre scenario has been fodder for ethicists almost since the prospect that cars might drive themselves first entered the horizon. It also, however, provides a second riddle: Regardless of the choice made by the car's computer, who pays for the damages?

The car owner? The company that built it? The software developer?

Those questions are being debated nearly everywhere that lawyers and insurance brokers meet these days. While state governments and the courts ultimately will decide them, many of them have been addressed in a new study by one of the preeminent legal authorities on autonomous vehicles.

Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor, expands on the belief that there will be a shift in blame for a crash from the at-fault driver to the automotive industry and the conglomerate of manufacturers and software developers who design and update car computers.”( Ashley Halsey Iii, The Washington Post, February 25, 2017)

“Driverless cars are heading our way. A breathless 7-part series on Forbes analyzed the staggering socioeconomic impact of driverless cars not impacting with other cars – or people. When you take into account all the industries affected and the residual effects, Forbes estimates that in the US alone, driverless cars will drive the economy by $2 trillion dollars annually. That’s a lot of incentive to put the driverless pedal to the metal.

According to industry analysts, about the only thing these AI vehicles will hit are personal injury lawyers – in the pocket. Human error accounts for approximately 90 percent of the 5.5 million motor vehicle accidents in the U.S that occurred in 2009 involving 9.5 million vehicles. Almost 34,000 people were killed and another 2.2 million injured. Once people are removed from the equation, collisions are predicted to fall to precipitously low levels. Which is good news for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians, but not so much for the bottom line of emergency rooms, highway patrol officers, chauffeurs and taxi drivers, insurance claim adjusters and the companies they work for, and most importantly – at least as far as this readership is concerned – personal injury lawyers.

Once these autonomous autos become a significant player on the vehicular landscape (they only have to reach 25 percent market penetration for accidents to dramatically drop), and that day is expected to arrive sooner than later, some observers predict that car insurance will just… disappear. Because, well, car-induced injuries will go the way of the horse-and-buggy.

Personal injury lawyers will find themselves in a particularly awkward spot.” (Stan Sinberg, Rocket Lawyer, 21 October 2014)

I have questions

Will all the technology needed to control the vehicle be in the vehicle itself, independent of any external interaction from a third party or device?

Some countries have Transport Accident Commissions that cover personal injury of people in cars, such as in Australia, will they continue to give no fault coverage as currently occurs, if so at what price? Some countries have Transport Accident Commissions that cover personal injury of people in cars, such as in Australia, will they continue to give no fault coverage as currently occurs? Will insurance companies be able to actuarially assess probabilities in order to frame insurance policies and costs?

Image: http://www.jyi.org/issue/careers-in-satellite-technology/

In the case of a driverless car doing things at the behest of a company supplying a service what technologies will they use to control the vehicle, satellites? How many satellites will a locality need to manage all of theses vehicles, say London and New York, and at what time of the day will those satellites be in range?  What is the bandwidth requirements of one vehicle or thousands and millions?

Will driverless cars go beyond the boundaries of a city or be limited in range? 

Who will own, and pay, for these satellites? What are the ramifications of a crowded space beyond earth?

Image: https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

What of unexpected outer space stuff? Sun spots that interfere, space junk and meteors hitting satellites? And on the earth storms, wind and rain cutting the connections.


How will the vehicles interact with traffic signals and what will be the cost to upgrade those lights at every intersection? Who is paying? The City of London, the City of New York, the Government, or the companies?

Will all streets require embedded sensors to keep the cars in specific lanes?  If so who will pay for these installations?

Is it the proposition that savings from all of the accidents that we have today, at the hands of human drivers, are funding all of this?

Then something wicked this way comes

Image: http://journal-neo.org/2017/02/06/new-adventures-of-north-korean-hackers/

The security agencies, in every country, must be over joyed. What are the additional costs, and employee numbers, that must be dedicated to stopping the hijacks and the hackers? Who will pay for these or do corporation executives think that national security is someone else’s problem, namely the government?

These are a but a few of the questions I have and the things I see. I think there are much more hidden, and unexpected consequences, buried in the icebergs below the horizons.

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