The Rise of the Machines
Yesterday I stopped in at the Jeep dealership to look at the new Cherokee. The attractive young sales person told me that this car can, park itself (!), the cruise control will automatically slow to match the speed of the car ahead should it be going slower than what the cruise control was set for (!!) and that it would automatically steer its way back to the lane it was traveling in should an inattentive driver allow the car to wander out of it (!!!). This is all very cool, and this technology will almost certainly become standard equipment in all cars, along with already standard ABS, mostly standard traction control, and 'fly by wire' indirect control of engine speed, and all the other digital stuff that is taking over all of our mechanical servants. I don't consider myself a luddite, but every time new tech comes along that takes away something I used to be able to control myself and puts it into the hands of a mysterious black box I wonder about where we are goin