OK so people have understood that what sets us apart from the other animals is our ability “to make an intentional and independent choice“.
But don’t you think we need to exercise in order to maintain that ‘capacity’? “Use it or loose it”, remember?
Yet everyday we give up some of our autonomy. Sometime in the name of safety, as in this case, other times in the name of increased efficiency/smaller prices.
No, I’m not exaggerating and no, I don’t think Google does it on purpose.
You see, so many of us have boring jobs where we don’t have anything else to do but to almost blindly follow procedures. This way we slowly become automata. We work (‘operate’?!?) like one, we eat standardized food, we learn the same ‘common core’, we watch the same bland and undemanding TV shows. A considerable proportion of the modern day people exercise their free will and ability to ‘fend off on their own’ only when driving, mostly to and from the workplace. Now we are going to give this up, too.
I don’t think Google is part of a worldwide conspiracy meant to transform most of us in dumb consumers/lame but highly productive workers, it’s just that they happen to have at their disposal what it takes to implement this technology and the rational incentive to do it. What else for the people being transported to do during this ‘freed’ time but to happily Google away on the interactive touch screen those ‘cars’ will come adorned with? Now who would have thought of a thing like that?!?
But I repeat and the study I cited from above proves me right. We should not blame ‘the technology’! It can not choose so it cannot be at fault for anything. It is only us that can decide how to use whatever technology lies in wait under our fingertips.
We are sole responsible for our fate.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against this concept, as such. Wonderful things can be achieved using this technology, just watch the video below. But please use every opportunity you have to exercise your ability to decide for yourself.
nicichiarasa 
I think that getting into one of those driverless cars is an intentional and independent choice, the same choice one makes when getting aboard a plane or hopping on a bus or train – you choose the destination and the means to get there based on various factors, such as time, efficiency, confort, availability and so on. You do not control any of those means to travel (you do not drive them yourself, or make them available or decide the route) and yet you still use them. On the other hand, on a personal level, I for one consider that driving is a sport, the only one I still practice daily, and I wouldn’t give it up for no matter what 🙂
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Correlation might not be causation but it certainly startles your mind.
The US experienced an economic boom, coupled with huge social transformations, after the advent of the car.
Some people say this happened because of the ease with which people and merchandise could move around. Maybe.
Some others speak of a virtuous circle involving the ‘car’ as merchandise, including here not only the car itself but everything that comes with it, roads, fuel, etc. This had some influence for sure.
My point is that driving itself has transformed the drivers. Ordinary people, who didn’t have to make life or death decisions on a daily basis before they had become drivers were suddenly entrusted with such a powerful tool as a car and set free to fend for themselves. This surely had to had an influence on those people, even if most of them didn’t see it this way.
And what do we do today? Not only that we’ve sent manufacturing abroad – another source of ‘human autonomy’, I’ll discuss that later – or replaced human workers with robots, now we plan on giving up driving.
I’m afraid that if we don’t find fast some other ways of exercising our free will and individual responsibility we’ll revert to being the hapless herd humankind was during the Middle Ages, when the ‘lords’ bossed around their subjects, somewhat like what the Masai herdsmen do today to their cattle on the African plains.
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