Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Ben Austin,
I’ve sort of assumed that this kind of technology would be designed for broad, well designed and laid out motorways, or roads that can easily be embedded with sensors or have other identifiers.
Yes, I would not deny that if the entire roading infrastructure were to be altered, different technology could be enabled. For instance, if special corridors were created with small roads made of steel, then large vehicles carry hundreds of people could race along them to work. In highly built up areas, these could be taken under the ground, although you'd probably want to invent some kind of moving staircase that could get the passengers up to the ground level. One day, in NZ, we will get this. I feel sure of it.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
And the ethical and legal issues with self-drive are greater than the tech ones.
Depending how you prioritize things, of course. Since the ethical issues are essentially externalized, they don't cost the developers much. But I think the tech is going to cost them far more than they think. Since it's entirely outside of the organizational expertise of Uber, I think they're going to just get burned on this. They've got the legal and ethical side under control (they just ignore it).
At the moment, they look like delivering something that people just won't want to use, any more than you would choose to talk to an annoying voice operated automatic call center over a person for anything but the most mundane task.
This ain't the tech you're looking for. Something genuinely useful might spin off from it, though. I just can't predict what that will be.
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Hard News: Stop acting like the law is…, in reply to Russell Brown,
He’s changed, man
He's openly in favour of decriminalization?
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Alfie,
you’d have to be naive to ignore Uber’s end-game
It could be that their end-game is naive. They literally are relying on making a technological break through. I wouldn't want to be banking on that. Definitely not if I was an investor, and definitely not on the very long history in this particular field of massively overpromising and underdelivering.
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Block chains make everything better. I sprinkle them liberally on everything.
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Gotta headdesk over this. It's like the Small Passenger Services Review that has been underway for ages, in which Uber made a submission, and the recommendations are already in their favour, never happened. Somehow, Simon Bridges is responsible for a "ceasefire" in a war that never happened. He gave them one sideways look, once, which was seized upon as him threatening to ban Uber. That's it, the sum total of punitive actions towards Uber by him, it would seem. Now, we're back to giving them legislative candy. Three bags full for Uber again!!
Meanwhile, on the street, drivers are getting busted constantly. But those who aren't are earning big bucks for Uber, and Uber is paying stuff all tax on that.
Back to business as usual.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
one has to keep in mind any app is only an communication tool, its an improvement in communication over the older phone/ Rt / data systems already employed for years in the movement of people from A to B.
It's way, way more than that!! An app on a smartphone is a piece of software running on what would have been a supercomputer in the 1980s, and it backs onto servers that actually are supercomputers in many cases.
Improved communication/organization/optimization, and the social rearrangement that has come about from these devices becoming ubiquitous, and the emergence of social media all combine to make a lot of things possible that weren't before. OK, I don't see a great future (in the short term) in them driving the cars, but there are so many possibilities short of that that are still in their infancy and don't involve incredible technological breakthroughs to succeed, just good organization, a good idea, and a willing audience. Just to see this stuff unfold up close was not a small part of why I became an Uber driver, and I expect this space is going to very rapidly transform in the next few years.
To me the biggest challenge, the conundrum I'm working through, and not alone on it, is how to bring the one last piece of the late 20th century into this: The open source revolution. I still see the need for an umbrella corporation clipping the ticket as one of the main things standing in the way of progress.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
It's an interesting discussion, if only to debunk that Uber is the commute option of the future. I do see a future of commuting that involves apps and sharing cars, and that one is not that far off and doesn't involve massive infrastructural changes. But it is not where Uber is taking us. Except in so far is it is at least making people more comfortable with the idea that apps and transport have a future together. For that, they've done a sterling job, piggybacking on the far, far more important work that Google already did.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to BenWilson,
We live 800m from a train station and find it hard to get housemates who will walk that far.
Yes, funny isn't it. That's a 5 minute ride on a $50 second hand POS bike that you could chain up at the station. But people would rather do a 5 minute walk to the bus stop and wait the extra half hour at the stop and in the bus.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Moz,
While I agree with you about that, the evidence is not on our side – millions of people do it every day.
Well not quite as small as what you were suggesting. Most passenger cars are not 1m wide (with interior even smaller, by the thickness of the walls at the very least) and 2m long (that's about the length of my body, so if I'm to fit inside it, it's going to have to have literally nothing else inside). You're talking about the size of a coffin, not a car. A pauper's coffin. There already are vehicles exactly like that - recumbent bikes. There are lots of electric versions of these around and have been for decades. They're not popular. You're going to have something that is neither safe nor comfortable. It will have no crumple zone at all, no padding, no heating, no view, be very low to the ground, probably have minimal suspension, very little traction, no storage, no handling, no performance. It will improve on a pushbike only by being drier and more efficient. Given that such a thing already exists and is not popular at all, what evidence is there that it will suddenly become a whole lot more popular?