Uber in Waterloo Region

[ookpik]

Driverless cars at the heart of the Uber battleground  

While the battle is being fought to determine how human drivers are controlled and dispatched, the war is being waged to determine which entity will ultimately control the driverless cabs of the future. If the experts are right, in a couple of decades there won’t be much need for human drivers...

The fight’s really about who will run the future fleets of driverless cars; about whether ride sharing can be so cheap that car ownership becomes obsolete; about who will flood driverless vehicles with “content.”

I can understand some of the arguments against Uber even if I don't necessarily agree with them. But this is a bit over the top. We've had similar revolutions yet economies have not only survived but thrived as a result.

Enjoy the hurly burly. But don’t be surprised if, in a few decades when the cabbies, and truckers and drivers are gone and the economic devastation hits, you lose your livelihood because the sector you work in relied on those automotive-sector jobs existing. Technology’s great until it lands you in the breadline.

Send not for whom the app tolls. It tolls for thee.

Whether or not we change and adapt to change rest assured that our global competitors will. Do we want to be on board? The sort of paranoia about change that this article is peddling is like arguing a few decades ago that we shouldn't allow businesses to computerize  because it would lead to massive unemployment of clerks who shuffle paper for the insurance companies in the region.