Various and Sundry

The Shiny and Chrome Future of Cars… According to the Companies Themselves

Not long after I shared an article about some of the latest innovations in self-driving cars, news broke that Volvo was planning to have all its cars be electric or, at least, hybrid by 2019. Well, Volvo isn’t the only one with grand plans for the automotive future. Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic goes over the plans of about a dozen car companies for the cars of the future. Though, spoiler alert: none of the car…

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Various and Sundry

The “Cadillac of Self-Driving Cars” May Be… Cadillac

One of the trends I casually, yet actively, watch is how “self-driving” automation is coming along. I’m sure many of us have followed Google’s efforts as well as Tesla. So I was shocked to read Alex Davies’ piece in Wired about the self-driving technology of Cadillac… which I suppose may mainly point to my pre-conceived notions of Cadillac. But I bet I’m not the only one.

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Various and Sundry

Automation and American Growth: Robert Gordon Edition

I’ve been reading and commenting a decent amount about automation this year, enough to make it seem inevitable. A popular topic with journalists and feature writers has been the impending automation of transportation which I noted back in May. Just recently, Vox ran another article about self-driving trucks and pending unemployment. As the topic appears to be developing into a “future trend trope,” I was very intrigued to learn about the work of Robert Gordon, which Vox also…

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Various and Sundry

More on Transportation Disruption

A week or so ago, I linked to an article in Vox about the self-driving car and how its wide use will change transportation as we know it. This article, also from Vox, goes into how three different “disruptors” to transportation will really shake up Detroit. As the title suggests, it’s more focusing on Silicon Valley/tech companies shaking up Detroit/car companies, but it follows on some of the same themes, especially where self-driving cars are…

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Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: Coming Changes to Transportation

One of the reasons I’ve become more interested in learning about basic income and future potential economic models has been what appears to be the growing automation of everything. In other words, we’ve moved beyond automating factory and manufacturing processes (though we still automate that and refine that automation), and into automating service and analytical processes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the race to implement the self-driving car, because when the self-driving car…

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