Driverless cars will finally solve the problem of moving people around with maximum efficiency, by ceding human control to impersonal algorithms. They promise to bring a messy, dangerous domain of life under control at last. Traffic jams will likely become a thing of the past, and accidents will be greatly reduced. So we are told at any rate.
In this case we can detect a familiar pattern. Driverless cars are one instance of a wider shift in our relationship to the physical world, in which the demands of competence give way to a promise of safety and convenience. The skilled practitioner becomes a passive beneficiary of something more systematic, rendering his skill obsolete.
-Matthew B. Crawford, Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
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