Technology is a Ruse

I'm sure that my generation was not the first to be promised marvelous technological splendors in the future. It may be that blithe speculations on coming advances (and nay-saying apocalypticism) is a constituent feature of technologized society.

Fine. But I don't think that lets my 5th grade science teacher off the hook for absolutely assuring us that we'd be both traveling and living in outer space within my lifetime (there's still time, I suppose). And it certainly doesn't let Weekly Reader off the hook for promising me that in the future (i.e. by the time I'd be able to drive) we'd all have self-driving cars. I can distinctly remember illustrations of a kid and an adult playing chess in their auto-automobile. Wow, I thought. That's going to be AWESOME!

And now, in my bitter mid-twenties, I know what a ruse it all was. There never was a self-driving car, and there never will be.

Except that BBC says there is and will be. Soon.

Listen to this rubbish: "You might buy a car that has a special button called an 'auto-chauffeur' button. You push it and it drives you home and wakes you up in your garage ."

Bullocks to your lies, BBC! Bullocks!