At what point do you feel like people are going to just anonymously start destroying self driving cars?
You know, peacefully, without harming humans, only corporation.
Will Uber & Lyft tint the windows so protesters will not know if these vehicles are unoccupied?
With the tradition of populist uprisings in the United Kingdom and France there will be resistance.
But closer to home, who gets in trouble if automated cars smuggle drugs or dead hookers?
Do you think Americans will just continue to roll over as jobs are replaced by Machines because we are numb enough to believe all ”progress” leads to human progress, rather than halting social progress altogether.
Progress for whom?
Let’s look at the quite recent history of progress:
Remember that small class that we used to call planters in the United States and The Caribbean?
The absentee landlords of Jamaican sugar plantations? The Kings of Southern Cotton. To put this into context, African Slavery was absolutely progress for small groups of investors, thanks to breakthroughs in shipping technology. We still know their names, because their English & Scottish names are displayed on the back of nearly every African American pro athlete.
I remember watching the Sonics back in the day and marveling at our very own Scottish national team. Nate Mcmillan, Derick McKey, Xavier McDaniel. That’s nearly an all Scotsman starting line up!
But we are all still paying the bill of those Cotton Kings today and the mess they left us in search of their business margins. Their progress.
Now let’s talk terror.
Foreign and domestic terrorism is an issue in America and Europe, but is weaponization of technology to eliminate entire industries at the cost of millions, for the benefit of only dozens, not a form of terror?
I am a capitalist pig. Watching such “progress” like “self service” registers and self driving cars threaten to collapse the entire system is a danger to Capitalism.
Even tossing aside my deepest concerns for my fellow riders on this journey through existence, these elitist weapons of automation are taking money out of the pockets who help sustain my Capitalist existence as a musician.
Yet also, even just as a citizen now working a 9 to 5 job that depends on customers having the disposable income to buy a ticket to a show, a shot of liquor from a human bar tender, or a couple grams of perfectly legal CBD cannabis flower.
I am not going to lay a hand on a self driving car. Nor will I (willingly) give them a penny, or use a self check out.
Every time I disappoint myself by walking into a Walmart, which is a matter of little choice as I travel further from our rich oceans towards the mids of America and the South, I quietly ask the person watching over those self check out machines for help and whisper,
“Those machines are not your friend”.
As they resist with various lines fed by management, I break down the nonsense the has been fed in a quiet voice as the blood rushes from face. It’s cold but not as cruel as those machines and their masters extracting wealth from their communities like a giant spider with a yellow smiley face.
I could say I missed the bronze rush of working for Uber or Lyft, but did when did my friends first get the feeling they were the pawns of Genghis Khan sent in to fight for the invaders before the invaders turn on them?
My solution? It’s not a solution but rather a tactic. Use democratic solutions. Block self driving cars and trucking services from all of your cities, large and small.
…and for you folks in small towns in decline, imagine if you had been able to block Walmart. Of course Walmart has the advantage of building their armies of Khan beyond city limits or in rival towns. It’s much easier to bribe and even left a small city council of rubes than buy off a major city.
They also have the advantage unlike Uber, that their weapons of automated are inside the store, protected by cameras and the humanoid paid the county’s depressed minimum wage to stop you from smashing them with hammers and shovels from the home department.
But self driving cars are just out there, truly alone. Stealing money from your family. Destroying your economy. Increasing the allure of Opiate and escape.
What are they going to do? Pay security to not drive them? Give them countermeasures like lasers, teasers, or sound weapons that will puncture our ear drums or make us shit our pants?
These are questions and legalities these companies are exploring. These industries have lobbyists. Do you have a lobbyist?
What are we getting ourselves into?
How is this type of automation helping you or me?
Confession: these posts are a fight to preserve the one front AI and Donald Trump’s base cannot yet penetrate. The very basics of critical thinking.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He is planning a tour of Nigeria for 2018.
