Re:Google, Detroit diverge on road map for self-driving cars
by Mandelbug on Monday June 30, 2014 @07:54PM
(#7968430)
I would like to point out that all of your examples are of expanding industries, not industries that underwent large societal, cultural, and legal transformations into entirely different industries. Society, culture, and laws are made for expanding industries, they have to be evolved and rewritten for industries of change.
So I am going to have to disagree, 25 years would have to be the most optimistic kind of prediction, assuming that all players are willing and pro-active, rather than passive and resistive (both in society and legally speaking).
Why is such a time-frame for this kind of a transition so ludicrous?
In 1989 cell-phones were uncommon and looked like this: http://phoneevolution.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1.jpg.
In 1899 there were about ~8,000 automobiles in the United States [1]. In 1924 Ford was producing over 2M Model T's per year [2].
In 1903 we saw the powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft by the Wright brothers. In 1927 somebody flew an airplane across the Atlantic ocean. [3]
[1] http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_19th....
[2] http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_30.ht...
[3] http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb-timeline.html#1903