No steering wheel: the promise for the road ahead

This first paragraph belongs to Maya Angelou, a precious gift from above who graced our personal desks, our bookshelves, our libraries and our classrooms with liberty, courage and sense of purpose. As an activist for the human condition, she was as relentless with her prose and poetry as her audacious fight for a virtuous life until the very end. We are far more creative because of Maya; she was 86.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Maya Angelou

Google's new concept car doesn't have a steering wheel. "It"--in the absence of a name--drives people to places safely and securely whilst acting like a silent, professional chauffeur in invisible mode. Through bleeding edge location-aware technologies, motion sensors, and deep analytical thinking, "she"--allow me to designate a gender--makes live, intelligent decisions as the wheels turn. In summary, Google is at the forefront in building the vehicles of the future and no one else is even close.

Google built their own car. Wow.

But this isn't an homage to Google's driverless car project. Rather, this is a reflection of the rich history behind the human transport system and where (and how) we'll traverse towards usual/unusual places moving forward.

We all know that our feet aren't designed for heavy duty road marches. We've known it for so long that we also figured out along the way that creatures on all fours could do a better job. Horses suddenly were more useful than, uh, giraffes. (No, you really can't mount on wolves.) But like all biological legs, they are attached to biological lungs and likewise endure biological wear-and-tear.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” This piece is generally attributed to Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company. While Henry didn't really invent the automobile (Karl Benz did), he did build something equally important: he made this invention desirable, universally accessible and affordable to the common person. Apart from this feat, Ford helped developed the assembly line that gave birth to modern manufacturing. Henry Ford's company was also the principal adopter of the forty hour work-week, the working time standard that's still practiced by a great majority today. Oh yeah, I'm a huge fan of this guy!

Henry Ford alongside the iconic Ford Model T.

My point with the preceding is that it's not just the inventors and their inventions that's changing the world. That distinction is and should be equally awarded to the enablers of that progress, like Henry Ford was to Karl Benz. The progress that Google brings to the table shall and must be complemented by more open software platforms, by better hard sensors, by bolder regulation, by stronger political will, by bigger leaders. These will make or break Google's attempt and it's important that we understand the significance of these forces.

Anyhow, I think the philosophical objective of cars is to make the world a smaller place. If everything was in reach, we wouldn't need self-driving cars at all. Google's attempt may not be answering that directly, but they're doing so with curious intent, creative persuasion and very alarming will. Imagine a class-action lawsuit if things go wrong on a massive scale. The prospect of this technology failing can cause Google ruin but that's not stopping them on this pursuit.

What's perhaps more important is that this project is a bold step that enables more champions to take their place in making it happen. Not too long, the step that follows is even closer to whatever it is that we really want. And who knows what that is? All I know is that this project screams courage through and through.

Without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Maya Angelou