Part of me still fears it ends up like a Segway.

So Dean Kamen and the Segway are kind of a sore point with me. The old-timers among us may or may not remember the crazy speculation around "ginger", which was going to change the world if only we knew how. Then we ended up with a Razor scooter that needed a Celeron in order to roll.

You look back over the course of history and there has never once been a demand for a sideways scooter. It's just not a thing. You look back into the murky pool of the future and you can't see a demand for a sideways scooter. It turns "walking" into something requiring an operating system. And honestly? Speaking as someone who worked in the industry where Dean Kamen's "revolutionary" dosing pumps supposedly overturned paradigms and shit, he basically slapped a stepper motor on a syringe. I fucking built one of those in the lab because I needed one and it was obvious - C-clamp plus syringe plus motor equals dosing pump. There's a lot more hype there than innovation.

Driverless cars are another matter entirely. If there were no purpose for them there would be no car service. There would be no taxis. There would be no chauffeurs. There would be no stagecoach drivers. There would be no rickshaw pullers. There would be no litter-bearers. "let someone else drive" is a human need that predates the wheel and a driverless car, if nothing else, automates a job done at some point by everyone with a driver's license.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a driving enthusiast. I enjoy driving. I look forward to a time when everyone else's car is driving them because it's gonna be a lot easier for me. And hey - there are plenty of times when I wish I could multitask and do things other than drive. Have that option available to North Americans regularly and cheaply? It's gonna be a game-changer on every level.

I differ with the conventional wisdom on when it'll happen, how it'll happen and what the biggest effects will be but once we hit critical mass it's gonna be a different culture.