What we see here is the purest form of a dystopian future. Everything we hold dear in traffic will be sacrificed for the convenience of apathatic air-conditioned slumbering in self-driving ugliness, on our way to a slightly colder place in hell. What we cherish most about ‘traffic’ (that concept will disappear during this disenchanting transformation) is the social aspect of it. Forever gone will be turning down the window in order to yell at our dearest fellow mortals. Gone will be the days that we were merely semi-enclosed in rolling aluminum gaskets, still able to hunk at each other and call a motherfucker, a motherfucker. Never again will the complexity of human traffic challenge our minds and invoke polite consideration for those we share the road with, let alone gentlemanlike courteousness.
As we float in the weightlessness and witlessness of our Sedric succumbing to whatever movie we ‘choose’ to play on the high-tech screen it sports for a windshield, we will learn to forget about the father of all modern-day conflicts. It will leave us unequipped for any real conflict situation that might still bubble up from the cesspool of our primate instincts. We will dodge each other at the first sign of genuine, well, otherness. And that, my friends, is a dystopia.
Ik zou het openbaar vervoer niet gemist willen hebben. Kan er nu niet meer mee reizen, maar vond het altijd een fijne manier om andere mensen te ontmoeten en iets mee te delen. Ik zal er tegenwoordig niet veel meer aan missen, gezien het smartphone gebruik vermoed ik zo….
Maar zelfrijdende autos is een ander symptoom van deze tijd. Of zal het worden.