I recently read an article that self-driving cars (SDCs) will hit the mass-market and be fairly affordable around 2030, and Isabel will be able to drive in 2029. This means that the first car she buys for herself, could be self-driving.
Mind blown!
It’s weird how the future becomes a little more “real” when a child is introduced into the picture (at least for me). How will the world they grow-up in be different than ours? Will their air be worse (probably)? Will the climate be more unpredictable (debatable)? How much will college cost (a sh** ton)? What new technology will she have?
In elementary school we played Oregon Trail on Apple IIE computers with a green and black screen. Middle school saw the rise of the pager, which was pretty damn useless except for maybe pager code. In high school, I bought my first cell phone and played Snake relentlessly. Now, three-year-olds are getting old iPhones as toys, kids text with their eyes closed on touch screens, teens share more photos on Snapchat than we took in a year with normal cameras, and this crap exists.
But thinking that she or my eventual grandchildren may never have to really drive is weird as hell. I’ll admit that I’m a pretty “aggressive” driver and have been known to make some unsafe maneuvers, prompting Mrs. FWL to forbid me from teaching our children how to drive. But will Isabel even need Mrs. FWL to teach her? Probably, since her first car will most likely not be self-driving (we joke it will be Mrs. FWL’s car from high school that I now drive), but for how long?
I’m sure she’ll have the privilege of yelling at someone from inside her car, knowing they can’t hear her, and yet still feeling that her admonishment will somehow affect their poor decision making in the future. But maybe SDCs will spare her excess years of psychological damage from driving the streets of Los Angeles where nobody pays attention, turn signals are ignored, and emergency sirens apparently mean “let-me-speed-through-the-intersection-before-I need-to-pull-over”.
Maybe SDCs will make her life safer. Perhaps she will grow up without her friends getting into any serious accidents and her generation will see serious problems like drunk driving or falling asleep at the wheel significantly reduced. Wouldn’t that be nice!
I’m sure I could make a list longer than my already long arm (I’m 6′ 5″) about how new technologies will impact her life and how her life will be different than mine…but let’s start with limiting her screen time at 3.5 months (except when “What Does The Fox Say” is playing on the iPad…she LOVES it! Oh, and she apparently likes football.)
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