Garages, beach huts, woods etc

michaels

I have an electric car and I have just started to doubt that my 11 year old daughter will need to learn how to drive. Self driving cars are coming by the end of the decade - 2020 not 10 years from now.

Buy a tesla for 60k and you have an electric car that can already drive itself.

Generali

westernpromise wrote: »

That's why I said number plates have been a good investment.

Thing is, I can remember Tomorrow's World on TV and how it was full of guff about cuboid sausages, flying cars, self-shining shoes, and much else that was never going to happen. I am pretty sure they ran more than one story about the return of airships too. Meanwhile it had nothing to say about the internet. Bill Gates didn't mention the internet either in his 1994(!) book The Road Ahead. Peak oil looked pretty plausible too but it looks a bit sick today.

Thinking back further still, The Island of Dr. Moreau was an 1890s take on GM animals, except back then it was surgery rather than genes that did the modification. In 1905 torpedoes were going to make surface warships obsolete. And so on.

I'm not a huge fan of futurology because it makes no testable predictions - the futurologist who cocks it all up* will always say that factor X came along and that's why Y didn't happen - but broadly speaking if people have been saying X is about to happen, and have been saying that for 50 or 100 years, then it's probably not about to happen.

* The best futurologist of them all was Philip K. D!ck, who accurately predicted that in general, technology will always get subverted towards crushingly trivial or frivolous ends. So in one story, time travel is used to send service engineers back in time to repair your faulty swibble before it breaks. In another, mass extinction of animals makes them valuable, and spawns a whole industry that creates artificial life simply so you can impress the neighbours with your fake sheep. In the same way, we have Facebook and Tinder.

To be clear I was talking about the stratification of cars into so many different 'classes' rather than the investment purchase of number plates.

Conrad

Self drive cars I think will become reality, but there's one main issue I have;


There's a stretch of dual carriage way where the slip road is very short.
This causes issues.
Drivers cannot build enough speed to enter the dual carriageway at the speed they usually would.
Inside line drivers tend not to slow to let them in as the drop in speed required is dangerous and may lead to someone hitting you from behind.


So the inside lane users plough on and 'guess' most slip road users will stop, and wait until the coast is clear.


I cant see quite how a bit of software will be able to cope with this sort of 'Human guessing game' where drivers 'imagine' what others will do.

Generali

Conrad wrote: »

So the inside lane users plough on and 'guess' most slip road users will stop, and wait until the coast is clear.


I cant see quite how a bit of software will be able to cope with this sort of 'Human guessing game' where drivers 'imagine' what others will do.

I suppose the guess could be a statistical model that is improved over time although that's cold comfort to those in smashes in the meantime.

I imagine that driving would be rather more like France or Australia where people tend to obey the road rules more slavishly and there is less give and take on the roads as there is in the UK.

antrobus

westernpromise wrote: »

....Thing is, I can remember Tomorrow's World on TV and how it was full of guff about cuboid sausages, flying cars, self-shining shoes, and much else that was never going to happen.....

It also had guff about mobile phones and laser eye surgery. Like any of those things are going to happen. Mind you, I'm still waiting for those flying cars.

westernpromise wrote: »

.....I am pretty sure they ran more than one story about the return of airships too. ....

Airships are always on the verge of returning.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-35933333

westernpromise wrote: »

....Meanwhile it had nothing to say about the internet. Bill Gates didn't mention the internet either in his 1994(!) book The Road Ahead. Peak oil looked pretty plausible too but it looks a bit sick today. ...

Mark Twain prediced the internet in 1898.

westernpromise wrote: »

...Thinking back further still, The Island of Dr. Moreau was an 1890s take on GM animals, except back then it was surgery rather than genes that did the modification......

So you're saying Wells got it right?

westernpromise wrote: »

....In 1905 torpedoes were going to make surface warships obsolete. And so on. ...

In 2016 drones are going to make submarines obsolete.

westernpromise wrote: »

...I'm not a huge fan of futurology because it makes no testable predictions - the futurologist who cocks it all up* will always say that factor X came along and that's why Y didn't happen - but broadly speaking if people have been saying X is about to happen, and have been saying that for 50 or 100 years, then it's probably not about to happen. .....

So you're saying that when it comes to prediciting the future, some people get it wrong?

westernpromise wrote: »

...* The best futurologist of them all was Philip K. D!ck, who accurately predicted that in general, technology will always get subverted towards crushingly trivial or frivolous ends. ...

You do realise don't you, that PKD regarded the Matrix as a documentary. He was stone cold crazy. Still the greatest writer in the English language. I suspect being crazy is good for the creative mind.

westernpromise wrote: »

....So in one story, time travel is used to send service engineers back in time to repair your faulty swibble before it breaks. ...

I'd have thought that such a development would be bl00dy useful, and not at all trivial or frivolous.

westernpromise wrote: »

....In another, mass extinction of animals makes them valuable, and spawns a whole industry that creates artificial life simply so you can impress the neighbours with your fake sheep. ....

Well it would, wouldn't it? The laws of supply and demand apply to bengal tigers in much the same way as they apply to bananas. Just in the same way as some people are very interested in the possibility of impressing the neighbours with fake velociraptors.

westernpromise wrote: »

...In the same way, we have Facebook and Tinder.

They impress the neighbours?

antrobus

michaels wrote: »

...Buy a tesla for 60k and you have an electric car that can already drive itself.

I think the Tesla cars are semi-autonomous.

But then a lot of cars these days are semi-autonomous to some extent. Automatic braking and park assist are available.

antrobus

Conrad wrote: »

....I cant see quite how a bit of software will be able to cope with this sort of 'Human guessing game' where drivers 'imagine' what others will do.

I think that's the issue with self-drive cars. Coping with other self-drive cars that will behave in a logical and consistent manner is one thing; coping with cars driven by humans is something else enitrely, and much trickier to deal with.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

It's hard to see what you get out of owning a wood too unless you're a shooter.

Tax.

They can be exempt from IHT for one thing.

padington

If anyone's had their eye on YouTube recently, the hover board is already here. Currently requires a skilled pilot but self balancing board will be here next year I would imagine and before you know it, we'll all be flying.

Making a self driving car might be the equivalent of pioneering font
transfers for graphic designers in 1983.

michaels

Generali wrote: »

It's hard to see what you get out of owning a wood too unless you're a shooter.

You can coppice or clear fell and replant - I did quite an interesting valuation of a wood for my parents based on the fact you were buying vol in the timber price although they were only really trying to justify buying part of their view to make sure no one else bought it and felled all the trees, in the end it went for something eye-watering given timber prices.