The Ultimate Driving Machine – BMW
Built To Move The Human Spirit – Mercedes Benz
Driven by Passion – Fiat
Born to Perform – Jaguar
Have the folks at Google lost their minds? At Elemence, we don’t mince words. That costs our clients too much.
Let’s talk big context. People love to drive. Always have – whether a horse to a car, you want some control. But here’s the kicker. Those Google cars – they drive the speed limit. They obey every rule.
How many of you drive the speed limit? Now imagine that you are in a car that takes that away from you, legal or not. The car decides for you. While Google talks about all of the time gained turning your car into an office or a lounge, what about all of the time lost on the inane, politically motivated 20 MPH speed limits? The open highway? People will become infuriated, forget about simply losing their shear love of driving.
Now it gets worse…you or a passenger has a heart attack. Yup. That 20 mph speed limit. Your dead. No driving faster. No weaving around traffic. No going around that traffic jam by driving over the grass through the park or the sidewalk. If that sliding car has to hit someone, how does it decide? Have you seen iRobot? Will Smith?
Now to the law breakers – the bad ones. They won’t use Google cars. The police will not – ever. But how can a citizen stop a crime if their car is bound by Google? Imagine being chased by a criminal – be you a truck driver or just a common citizen. You’re toast.
Yet Google focuses upon not needing windshield wipers or steering wheels…
Innovation, great big innovations, are about solving major challenges to advancement of human life by either better quality time or more of it. Well, here’s a great example – driverless cars – where that concept is bastardized to a point so far out of context that one wonders if the people thinking of it are indeed connected to humanity at all. I cannot even understand what major technological challenge this solves. I’d spend the money on medical breakthroughs.
Let’s now take a left turn – if we are allowed to – to AirBnB. Awesome concept, it’s successful. It will not, though, stay so profitable and get so massive as some think. Again, it’s time for some context.
Who really thinks that the entire global hotel and resort industry will allow themselves to be taxed, regulated and fee’d too death while these room and home renters are not? Who thinks local, state and national governments that do the taxing, regulating and feeing will let them get away with that? Really?
Then look at that silly valuation. Who honestly thinks that the entire hotel and resort industry will wholesale be decimated by hundred’s of millions seeking the isolation and lack of consistency of homes and rooms? It’s a huge market, but it’s not on the scale of what most people seek – human companionship, consistent, professional environments, entertainment, restaurants, that giant luxury pool, the business center, the conference rooms and on and on.
Again, it’s a massive human disconnect. A disconnect that ignores basic behaviors, trends and legalities. Never mind that most of their reviews are one to three stars when you google their service. Any investor tried that?
Finally – this one’s quick – Uber will see the same nightmares unfold as AirBnB. From basic employment law (you can’t have 100s of thousands of carefully directed independent contractors) to a taxi and limousine industry that is truly fee’d, taxed and regulated to death, how could they possibly think they will simply ignore that? At a million or more per taxi to get one on the road, Uber cannot hide for very long from those angry Taxi companies or the government.
Yet some prognosticators say Fedex and UPS will be driven out by Uber. Yeah. Right. Sure.
This is the danger of relying too much upon inhuman Big Data, of a cloud based, ever more humanity disconnected from the real world society. It’s a world where basic human reality is lost and it will be those who don’t fall for it that will come to dominate that world when no one is looking up anymore. It will be easy pickings…
