Most of them remind me of Clifford Stoll's famous rant:

http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...

"This new thing isn't like the old thing, so it could never work."

As for the crazy from the other side, read anything by Nicholas Negroponte at the same time.

A lot of young people, especially young hackers, think like authors of science fiction novels, where there is some grand society that they have designed, and how everything is happy. Why don't people get on board?

First, they don't trust you to be right about all the trade-offs. This mistrust only increases when you tell them to get with the times; it's clear distaste for their preferences, so it only signals that you don't value their input.

Second, even if your new society model is better, you have to get people to use it. And if the way you transition is "everyone give up your old thing, then we will all move to the new thing, trust me," they will do the opposite of trust you.

Self-driving cars are a very nice transition, because no one is forcing them into use. You can have one if you want. You can hear your friend talking about how useful they are. You can try it out, and if you don't like it you don't have to use it.

"No one owns a car" is not a nice transition, no matter how awesome you think it is in the latest novel you read about able-bodied and pretty 20-somethings. Public transportation really sucks in a lot of places precisely because making public transportation awesome gets less priority than a bunch of other things, like demanding that people get to bring their pets or bikes on board, or the homeless people using it as a place to sleep.

You can make a very good case that social justice requires letting the homeless sleep on the buses. That's fine. It may even be the right call. But it means that no one else will want to use the buses. (NYC has cops every block to keep the homeless moving along, and their public transport is pretty nice.)

Buses could be awesome, if they were managed like Google buses. I would love to take one of those to work. But look at all the grief they get from the left. Grand ideas for re-imagining society will face opposition from places you would never have imagined.

...

> Buses could be awesome, if they were managed like Google buses. I would love to take one of those to work. But look at all the grief they get from the left. Grand ideas for re-imagining society will face opposition from places you would never have imagined.

I think this is all a bit over the top. Many cities already exist that function very well substantially without private cars. Central London, although rather a pleasant place, is not a science fiction utopia exclusively filled with nubile twenty somethings, but nevertheless it functions overwhelmingly on other means of transport - buses, cycling, the underground, and taxis. I'm not aware of it being particularly unique, either. What you're suggesting as difficult or intractable problems are frankly rather minor. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've only ever come across the occasional over-chatty drunk.

Even taking into account the whole of London, including the much more suburban outer sections, where you really do need a car to get around, 40% of households do not own cars [1]

The real issue with public transport isn't the homeless, it's that it tends towards a hub and spokes model which works very well for commuting, but quickly becomes awkward for non-standard journeys. Driverless cars would add an excellent complementary element to the combined transport system. I expect that in a couple of decades the number of households that don't own cars will have gone up to 60%, meaning pretty much universal in the centre, and I don't anticipate that will create a dystopia.

[1] http://www.uncsbrp.org/driving.htm

Which is too bad, really, I have a feeling there is an important issue there that I should see.

I'm not prepared for this debate, just pointing out why I can't understand the position.

Sure called that wrong.

Not everyone on HN is from the US - US has a massive car problem, because Americans had a very strong car culture for 7 decades now - so for them, not having a car is "new".

I come from a country where 25 years ago pretty much no one had a car, because you had to have a permission from the government to own one, and even if you did, there was a 5 year wait to be allowed to purchase it. For us, having a car and embracing the car culture is "new". Not having cars is a sign of the older, poorer country, which we want to have little to do with now.

For me personally, driving is like the second favourite activity I do during the day, even if it's just going to work. I dread the day when self-driving cars become mandatory - I will be incredibly unhappy and I do not want that to happen anytime soon.

Is it ok to voice my opinion here? Or will you tell me that I should go away from the "startup accelerator; new way of doing things" website that I have grown to love? Can you not like both startups AND cars? Is that too complicated?

Since you insisted on cars: the short answer is that theres lots of evidence humans can't drive cars. It goes well 99.9% of the time and the rest ends up being 30000 people dead every year, many of them not in a car at their death. So they died for somebody elses convenience, and that turns out to be a rather common occurence with cars and all the things they bring along (just look for the free parking debate below). So the sentiment in countries that have had cars for a long a time and have seen the effects of that is shifting to no longer put up with it, certainly in cities where suburbia descends every morning.

It's worse than that: the annual global estimates are 1.2 million dead, 50 million injured. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_motor_vehicle_c...

I've broken out of my normal mode in case you actually believe that HN's general opinion on this technology is a consensus that entirely disagrees with you. Personally, I'm excited for the technology to become mature enough to become a consumer product, but I'm unlikely to remand control of my personal vehicle to automation if I don't plan on drinking.

I know that retaining my vain control obsession over my vehicle will eventually make me one of the more dangerous vehicles on the road (as the share of quality autonomous vehicles increases in the future), and I know that I'll buy one for my family (whenever that happens). Until my body fails me or I don't have enough time to drive, I'm going to ride my motorcycle and drive my car myself, while sincerely encouraging literally everyone else to get an autonomous vehicle. I know that there will be others like me, and I know that these people will either evolve into very good drivers or angry teenagers. Regardless, the road will be safer for all, and our collective time will be less wasted on piloting tasks.

You're not alone.

*EDIT I should note that I'm a U.S. resident. My daily commute is >50 mi, though I'm looking to relocate. Public transit doesn't exist for my home and work destinations without significant (>4 hours a day) layover and transit times.

The upshot of this is that this probably won't happen until after you become unable to drive yourself. I'm sure there will always be a market for enclosed driving courses/racetracks anyway.

BART is a cancer, Caltrain and Amtrak have service schedules designed by morons and make, I think, literally TWO farking connections to BART.

There is a hell of a lot of improvement that could be done to fix public transportation in addition to working on this.

Something people forget waay too often..

Really? Any study on this matter?

Here's one article, you can Google hundreds more.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are...

Seldom used? Even New York City has lots of cars.

I think people are assuming everyone else is just like them.

As for universal car-sharing, it starts with the idea that "cars are idle 90% of the time" and ignores the fact that 80% of people want to use them at the same time: on their morning and evening commutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_h...

It would appear that many people do live without cars so there is an untapped market.

This is why cars will never disappear. The solution is self-driving cars. Cars are a menace when operated by humans. Reducing the danger, traffic problems, and parking issue with cars is the answer, not removing them entirely (although I do support banning them in dense urban areas and business districts -- people can always park on the outskirts and take transit in).

But yes, cars are necessary sometimes. We need a solution for people who only need a car a couple of times a month or less. A fleet of self driving cars you can rent perhaps? Like a taxi service without the driver.

In Europe cities were obviously not build with cars in mind, and as a result I enjoy here a much higher density of amenities (and suffer much worse driving conditions / parking time).

Having all this space available for cars is not transparent to pedestrians.

Huh, why would you think that? I'm not sure there's a major city in the U.S. that wasn't already a major city pre-car. And cities weren't redesigned post-car, that's why a lot of them have road problems. U.S. cities are spread out because of suburbanization. It's only going to increase as the workforce becomes more remote-based.

Los Angeles. Possibly more.

> And cities weren't redesigned post-car, that's why a lot of them have road problems.

Sure they were. Not from scratch, but incrementally. Its true that because it was incremental and not ground-up, and mostly affected new development and re-development, that cities that were major cities pre-car (like NYC) look very different than newer cities (Los Angeles).

> U.S. cities are spread out because of suburbanization.

"Suburbanization" is an effect, not a cause. Designing for cars is a (but not the only) cause.

LA Houston Phoenix San Antonio San Diego Dallas San Jose

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Edit: Even along the strip itself it is hard to take a direct line and you need to go over bridges etc. Walking from the main part of the strip e.g. Bellagio to the convention centre is only a couple of miles but is a pretty unpleasant walk. Whether it is better than waiting for a bus/taxi from CES probably depends on the condition of your feet and the shoes you are wearing.

I do understand that in the Summer it would be a pretty unappealing walking any distance at all.

Some people have realized the extreme bargain this is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/nyregion/a-rent-free-place...

Yes, think about the space taken up by parking, and the visual barrier it presents.

There's a shopping and restaurant strip between me and my office. The shop owners campaign for maximum street parking for the convenience of their customers, on top of the side-street and off-street parking behind most of their buildings. Yet at almost all hours, the entire strip is lined on both sides with cars to the point that anyone passing can't easily see shop windows, foot traffic, the social proof of people eating in a popular restaurant, etc. You just drive on through because it lacks appeal.

Think about a shopping centre and how open-air parking means that the complex takes up a huge amount of space and sets it all back so far from the road for anyone walking. If we took out parking allocations (or went with undercroft parking) and collapsed cities or filled in those areas with more "living" spaces, I think the result would be more appealing. Blocks could be more lively or smaller and more walkable.

There's some interesting stuff about parking here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/04/donald-shoup/free-par...