The car of the future won't need a driver

No doubt you've heard about the Google experiments with driverless cars. And it ain't just the geeks at Google. Audi, Mercedes, Freightliner, and pretty much every other big name in over-the-road transportation is figuring out how to make cars and trucks that won't be driver-dependant.

That's gonna be a massive bummer for those of us who actually enjoy the task of piloting a motorized vehicle. Alas, those days are coming to an end.

The geeks are winning.

And not only are the geeks winning, they seem to be tied in pretty tight with the Big Dogs in what we might loosely term the "military-industrial-prison-education-agri-chem-NGO" complex.

After all, where would Bill Gates be without those guys?

Or, Zuckerberg, for that matter.

If you're old enough to recall the pre-digital era, you'll remember that files got filed, stuff got done, everybody had a job, and nobody got hacked.

After thirty years of Microsoft/Apple progress, all files get corrupted sooner or later, much less ever gets done in spite of ten times the investment, hardly anyone has a job, and everything gets hacked.

And we are led to believe that this is the result of something called "progress."

But make no mistake; progress continues its progress...

In a few short years you'll get into that driverless Uber-ride that slides up to your apartment within minutes of you having pushed the "need ride" button on your smart-phone.

You can be half or three quarters or even 100% in the bag, and you'll still get to your destination, because in the post-driver era impaired driving will be an impossibility!

It'll be like the old days, when Festus wobbled outta the saloon three sheets to the wind, tumbled into the back of the hay-wagon, and had the horses walk him home while he was passed out in the hay.

Yup, we're progressing so fast, we're almost back to that...

Except tomorrow, when you pass out in the back of that driverless Googlemobile, Uber will have scanned the data-base for outstanding outrages in your digital history.

That's when you'll find out that you can't get out of that handy-dandy driverless car till you've taken care of your outstanding library overdue fines and whatever else might be outstanding on your digital record:

• traffic tickets
• overdue bills
• tax arrears
• alimony
• child support payments

Yup, that brave new world driverless car gonna be way more than a car!