The rumor is that they intend to scale up a silicon photonic chip fab, which is very ambitious, and expensive. It will either be a spectacular failure, or a bold step into the future.
If we all lived in huts, subsisted on rice and beans, and travelled by bicycle, humanity wouldn't be threatening the stability of the biosphere; but of course, we're wired to crave richer experiences, we hoard, and we seek to acquire status which is demonstrated by how much excess cargo we have to waste.
The more aspects of the human experience we can ephemeralize, the less we need to go out and muck up the physical world to get what we want.
A just released Pew research study has shown that 1 in 5 are online almost constantly. Which is to say, their experience of the world is already largely virtual, and the role that their physical presence plays is, by extension, diminished.
I'm in Canada and a friend of mine was working in a government call centre; her job description could be summarized as 'deny people benefits in 9 minutes or less'. Her role as enforcer of state brutality eventually led to clinical depression and she quit. She couldn't handle turning down people who were more often than not in dire straights.
Surfing is plenty exclusionary. whether or not this is a bad thing, there are a finite number of decent breaks in the world. You can go to the ends of the earth, paddle out an hour before the sun is up, and there are already 20 guys in the water trying to catch the same wave.
If you're a kook with a $100 soft top the others will work together to keep you at the back of the lineup. Whether it's a matter of safety or subculture is besides the point, dedicated surfers don't want you around.
Surfers have no inclination to promote surfing unless they have some kind of sponsorship. Promotion is a corporate venture that has nothing to do with surfing and everything to do with making money. Mo money, mo problems.
Back in the 90s when the print industry was still a thing my canned statement for whenever I passed a magazine rack was that Playboy should really start covering up the nipples so it can sit on the front of the magazine rack and compete with Frat-boy mags like Maxim, Loaded, and FHM. Playboy had great content and a great culture built up of esteemed contributors, it's a shame legacy pride kept them from making it to the next generation. I'm skeptical there's much left to salvage at this stage.
Less Space taken up by parked cars may mean more space for people to live. Though SF real estate will likely be insane for the foreseeable future any way you look at it.
Mobility should be a right, driving shouldn't be a right. If someone is too old, too young, too poor, disabled, or otherwise unable to drive, and unfortunate enough to live in a car dependent area (as most inhabited areas are) then their rights are being infringed upon by your driving and others. For most of those who are victims of vehicle accidents- which number in the millions annually- what about their rights? Most of them did not cause the accident- they were passengers, other drivers, cyclists, pedestrians etc.
While the regulations were at one time created to keep shady players out of the industry, Taxi services nowdays are most certainly regulated for the sake of limiting competition. Consider that in Manhattan in the 1950s there were roughly 13,000 taxi medallions. Today there are still only 13,000 medallions available- they sell at auction for a million dollars a piece.
The Taxi companies that own these medallions have gone to court many times to enforce the artificial scarcity that drives up the value of their golden geese.
A taxi driver in NYC has to pay $80,000 a year over and above his insurance and operating costs just for the right to operate a cab: that money goes straight into the pockets of medallion owners who don't much of anything except own medallions- until a threat like Uber comes along, wherein it's time to deliver brown paper bags filled with bundles of unmarked bills until the problem is solved. Both the drivers and the consumers are getting shafted.
NY is an extreme example, but the taxi industry works more or less same way in pretty much every city in the western world. It's not uncommon for incumbent businesses to hijack goodwill regulations as a way to stifle legitimate competition.
Now Uber and app-based livery services do need to be regulated- but their service is a whole different paradigm from the traditional taxi industry. In California progressive legislation has been passed that places these services in a completely different category than tradition taxi companies, much to the dismay of those taxi companies.
Uber is also expanding aggressively- their revenue has grown 20% per month over the past couple years, they started with 15 cars in 2009 and they are now valued at nearly 4 billion dollars, and operate in 60 countries. Every city they go into, they go into expecting a fight. They win some and they lose some. They were shut down in both Toronto and Vancouver. Uber is a fascinating company to watch- it's trench warfare everywhere they go- and they have mountains of venture capital backing them.
Now 2 of Google's recent acquisitions are A-list competitors. I wonder how much they paid for BD, and how much of a priority it was for Google to make the deal before the challenge and not after.
The central characters in Robocop were treated empathetically, the scathing social satire and black comedy were not central to the main storyline of heroes and villians, so there was still an engaging film even for those viewers lacking the social awareness needed to appreciate irony.
In Starship Troopers, every character was disposable, hence the gigantic 'whoosh'.
I recommend 'Hollow Man', Verhoeven's last, and largely forgotten Hollywood film, released in 2000. It's even more subversive, and the subversive message is even more subtle. So subtle in fact that I doubt even the film's producers were aware of what was going on. It's either a terrible B-grade hollywood sci-fi thriller, or brilliant black comedy, depending on whether or not you latch on to the subtext.
They have not done serious work yet with driving in snow and other inclement weather conditions, this is the phase they're entering into as we speak. They've suggested their cars will be ready for the public in 2017, I guess we'll see if they meet this deadline or not.
The number of longshoremen needed to run a modern port has decreased by a factor of 10 over the last 30 or 40 years. Because of their strong unions, the one's who remain get paid very well. Unions don't really have a strong bargaining chip once their labour is no longer needed.
It's not 50 years away, it's closer to 5 years away. In 15 years they will dominate the roads.
Google's cars have already demonstrated that they are safer than human drivers with 99% statistical certainty, they have over 750,000 miles of accident free testing on public roads under their belt.
Because Self Driving Cars stand to reduce traffic accidents by 90% or more, it is likely that they will be afforded certain legal protections against the sorts of class action lawsuits you're suggesting, much as they do for vaccine makers, under the auspices that in spite of the risks involved for manufacturers the net benefit to society is too great.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538146/magic-leap-needs...