The Driver in the Driverless Car

Pick Your Future

In the unevenly distributed lurch toward the future, public discussion about the risks and benefits of rapidly developing technologies suggests that societies don’t really have a say in shaping their own progress. Yet, when social systems and infrastructures crumble, civilization’s advances disappear. The tempered enlightenment of Roman times slid into the ignorance of the Dark Ages. Star Trek’s vision of a fair, abundant, tech-driven future utopia appeals to optimists. But if society doesn’t make hard choices and establish a stable ethical framework, the result may be a “Mad Max dystopia” of depleted resources and social chaos. People’s choices must focus on current social disparities and on fair access to the fruits of progress.

Today’s Uncertain, Accelerating World

At first, people embraced the benefits of the microchip revolution – home PCs, email, GPS, and the like. But the bright future soon lost its sheen for workers who faced rampant “income inequality” and the loss of jobs to automation. Some expressed rage against big tech’s economically destabilizing effects by hurling excrement at Google-buses. In the “driverless...