driverless cars are becoming a reality. i envision within 10 years these things are going to be on being sold and on the roads, which means however many people are employed as truck drivers/taxi drivers, etc. are going to be completely out of work, if not in 10 years but in the next 25.

with all this rhetoric lately about young australians on the dole needing to go find work we're seeing from tony abbott, it makes you wonder given the reality of automation is that jobs are getting scarcer and scacer. i see nothing that is going to replace most of the jobs in the transportation sector that are going to be lost to driverless cars. professions everywhere will follow suit. the robot economy is coming and nobody's job is safe. i think the future is going to consist of a very large, if not the majority, of the population on government benefits or doing pointless, make work jobs to keep people occupied, with a small number of creative and managerial professionals at the top of the pyramid whose jobs are resistant to automation.

Nah I wouldn't worry. At this stage to help driverless cars requires infrastructure spending on the NBN to allow communication. Fat chance with this neanderthalish lot.

JC Denton wrote on May 14^th, 2014 at 12:04pm:

driverless cars are becoming a reality. i envision within 10 years these things are going to be on being sold and on the roads, which means however many people are employed as truck drivers/taxi drivers, etc. are going to be completely out of work, if not in 10 years but in the next 25. with all this rhetoric lately about young australians on the dole needing to go find work we're seeing from tony abbott, it makes you wonder given the reality of automation is that jobs are getting scarcer and scacer. i see nothing that is going to replace most of the jobs in the transportation sector that are going to be lost to driverless cars. professions everywhere will follow suit. the robot economy is coming and nobody's job is safe. i think the future is going to consist of a very large, if not the majority, of the population on government benefits or doing pointless, make work jobs to keep people occupied, with a small number of creative and managerial professionals at the top of the pyramid whose jobs are resistant to automation.

Yes this is a glimpse of the future, I don't know how long but sometime in the future. It will happen progressively but the path is to a future where the majority of the work can/will be done by machines of one type or another. How human fit in, react and inter-react is a mystery yet to be addressed and solved.

I think in someways the unemployed of today are the pioneers of the future - to find meaning in life without meaningful employment.

Its too big a question for me, I'm getting a headache - I'm going for a Bex and a nice lie down. (Gee it's good to be old sometimes; I leave these probs to the young people  :P :-[)

(Gee it's good to be old sometimes; I leave these probs to the young people  Tongue Embarrassed)

Isn't that what we've all done?

Every time She Who Must Be Obeyed gets behind the wheel I feel that I'm in a driverless car. I just hold on and hope it knows where it's going.

bogarde73 wrote on May 14^th, 2014 at 3:15pm:

Isn't that what we've all done?

Hey, don't blame me, I've been beating my head against the brick wall of Conservatism for 50 years. It been obvious we have been going in this direction for 50+ years.

And it is probably the least of our future problems that are evident today. We should be acting for Global Warming (should have started 10 years ago) and I don't even rate that as the most pressing. I rate overpopulation, water, education and corruption as the biggest problems facing humanity, and done of are been barely talked of  ::).

I've been thinking for a while that driverless cars could be the go, except I am not sure of the technology and how it would work. But I am sure it will eventually come in. But probably not in the format you are thinking of.
I imagine it as keying in a destination and computers taking the car or transport pod along the roads, keeping it from crashing into other cars. I suppose there would have to be set tracks in the road-maybe not physical tracks but some sort of electronic tracks for it to follow.
Which would mean there could still be traffic jams, I guess, although you would be warned of them. :)

But what I would think could come in before that is driverless transport. Maybe mini rails alongside freeways, with small coaches, all automated or controlled from headquarters.

As far as work goes, things will sort themselves out somehow. Maybe over time there will be a lot more jobs in technology.
Automation is going to affect every area of life. I used to teach, but the days of the classroom teacher are numbered-or should I say, the days of the classroom as such.
Everything changes. I once read that after cars replaced horse & carts, the horse population fell by about 9/10s.
Driverless cars might be available within 10 years, as in ones that can do a lot of things automatically, but they won't be in the majority on the road, so another car will still be able to crash into them!
Truly automated roads are a lot further off than 10 years.
I once attended a lecture (in about 1993) where the lecturer stated that books would no longer be printed after 2000. they would no longer exist.

She's right about the technology, wrong about the timeline.
that is usually the case, I follow predictions as a kind of minor hobby. :)

So don't worry too much, we're right for more than 10 years. ;)

Totally driverless, or just a much higher level of automation?


Quote:

Audi says the driver will always be expected to be alert and ready to take control of the vehicle back from the advanced electronics. Durheimer says the company will only offer the technology "when we think there will be a market for it", suggesting cost could be an inhibiting factor. "It's a question of how much the customer is willing to pay,"says Durheimer. Audi says it will be some time until cars allow drivers to completely tune out at all speeds. And Durheimer says it will be a long time until drivers can largely switch off to use an iPad or read a paper in the car. He says it’s crucial there is nothing interfering with their ability to take control of the car if required.

http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/driverless-cars-possible-by-2015-20130313-2fz96.html?gclid=CLf1parPrL4CFUNwvAodSS4AVQ

Isn't it something like metalic magnetic strips they are putting in the side of the road for this?
I saw something about it somewhere.

Me thinks it would be a great idea, not to have people at the control, and let the cars do the driving, thus no more accidents, no more being fined for any traffic offence, and the cars won't have to be built with too much gizmos or steel or bumpers, steering columns, indicators, probably more economical, maybe the cars we are driving today, will be the recycled scrap metal used for the cars of the future eh?  :)
And the future gen can just relax and make phone calls, read their electronic ipad newspapers, or just have a snooze.

Now, here is something I had always wondered for the future, flying cars.
When it was the 1960's, me thought that by the futuristic 1980's we would have them!

In the silent movie era, I think the 1920's, they made a movie called "Metropolis" and it had some spot on future ideas that did come true (the telephone on the wall and seeing the other person talking to you)....but the one thing that didn't come true, was their flying cars, and they had flying Model T Fords at that!  ;D

Sophia wrote on May 15^th, 2014 at 2:10pm:

In the silent movie era, I think the 1920's, they made a movie called "Metropolis" and it had some spot on future ideas that did come true (the telephone on the wall and seeing the other person talking to you)....but the one thing that didn't come true, was their flying cars, and they had flying Model T Fords at that!  ;D

A recurring theme in the late 1920s/early 1930s.  Here's one from the 1930 American science fiction/musical/comedy (now there's a mixture for you!) "Just Imagine" starring Maureen O’Sullivan, El Brendel and John Garrick, which gave the future (it was set in 1980) a much lighter treatment than the magnificent but rather grim stroryline of "Metropolis":

http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2012/08/06/9774719/FS%20-%202012%20-%20Just%20Imagine%20OSullivan%20rides.jpg