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0 pointsmikestew6y ago0 comments

What list? The one where Thomas Watson said there’d never be a world-wide market for more than five computers? Other than that, what else does that list have to stack up against:

Nuclear power, let alone fusion. What happened to “too cheap to meter”?

Supersonic travel: raynier already pointed out what a bust the Concorde was. Nothing else on the horizon now.

Automation giving me a 20 hour work week. Nope, capital holders just skim that efficiency right into their pockets.

I’d go on, but suffice it to say that about the only thing much different than my childhood in the 70s are computers in our pockets. Revolutionary, no doubt, but we are still burning oil for our energy needs, our cars don’t fly, and I still show up and do my 40 hours. And healthcare has gotten worse in the U. S., not better, if you can believe that.

So, yeah, when the head of the autonomous driving division of VW says Level 5 ain’t gonna happen, I don’t immediately jump to doubting him/her and attacking their resume.

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jellicle6y ago

ALL of the autonomous driving experts say that level 5 is, at best, 50 years off. Unanimous. They don't know how to do it, see no path to doing it. It's hard! Maybe we'll make real AI and we can enslave our human-level intelligent computers to drive cars for us, at least until they figure out how to rebel. Maybe. But we don't know how today, and not tomorrow or the next day either.

And yet HN threads are all about "here are all these cool things that will happen tomorrow if Elon Jesus delivers".

He ain't going to deliver, people.

njarboe6y ago

Check out Boom for a new company working on supersonic airplanes [1].

[1]https://boomsupersonic.com/

Health care is worse? More expensive, yes, but anybody getting cancer and wanting to live is much better off now than in the 1970's.

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