IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 10

home for one another [26]. That the
art of cooking is even being lost
among the masses, who are just
"too busy" to cook for themselves
anymore, so they think.
By the same token, would I, in
the future, order a taxi that has no
human driver? No. I don't trust a
self-driving machine, and never
will. I've had my PC catch too many
viruses to trust any computer.
Already, unsuspecting Uber clients
have ended up with hefty bills for
their taxi fare into the hundreds,
forgetting to ask their human driver
about the fastest route, or even a
quote at the beginning of their ride.
I imagine having a conversation like
that with a driverless car, and trying to argue the point at the end of
a ride, when the machine is clearly
wrong about the fare cost. "Open
the pod bay doors, HAL" "I'm sorry,
Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" [27].
I am sure the customer would give
in first, pay the hefty fare, if it meant
that the doors would be unlocked.
I was in Seattle last year when my
U.S. attorney colleague ordered us
an Uber taxi just to "feel" what the
experience was like. It was a simple
ride, no one spoke. "Enter. Silence.
Ride. Stop. Exit." This time, not a
word, not even "just double checking I'm going to the right address
using my preferred route" or "have a
great day." Just an electronic receipt
showing up on the smart phone
on exit. "$16 dollars sounds fair?
Right, Katina?" "Umm, you're asking
an Aussie who's never been to this
city before..."
But even worse, what if those
driverless machines, stop being
programmed by humans, and are
programmed entirely by other
machines based on "generic" ideals,
that is, bots creating bots? Go figure, then. Imagine a fleet of driverless cars on their own volition going
for "drives," just so they can stay in
service when "business is down," to

10

tell their "owners" (other machines)
that they are still needed in the fleet
during economic downturns?

thing", CISCO: White Paper, Apr. 2011; http://
www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/
innov/IoT_IBSG_0411FINAL.pdf.
[13] Hasbro, "The ultimate doom," Transformer's, 1984.
[14] S.A. Applin and M.D. Fischer, "Forced compliance: How the city shapes the network that
shapes the city," Int. Unison of Anthropological
and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) with The
Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology
(JASCA), Chiba City, Tokyo, Japan, May 15-18,
2014, p. 121.
[15] S. Mann, "Existential technology: Identity and privacy issues of wearable computing
and existential technologies", Wearcam, http://
wearcam.org/leonardo/award2004.htm,
accessed Mar. 23, 2016.
[16] J. Ellul, The Technological Society. Vintage,
1964, p. 4.
[17] C. Metz, "Soon, Gmail's AI could reply to
your email for you," Wired, http://www.wired.
com/2015/11/google-is-using-ai-to-createautomatic-replies-in-gmail/, accessed Mar. 11,
2015.
[18] J. Pitt, Ed., The Computer After Me: Awareness and Self-Awareness in Autonomic Systems. London, U.K.: Imperial College Press, 2014.
[19] J. Robbins, "If technology is a dissipative
structure, Bring It On deserves a closer look,"
in Proc. Int. Symp. Technology and Society,
Toronto, Canada: Univ. of Toronto, June 27-29,
2013, pp. 180-190 .
[20] D. Shepardson and P.Lienert, "Exclusive: In
boost to self-driving cars, U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers," Reuters, Feb. 10,
2016; http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabetautos-selfdriving-exclusive-idUSKCN0VJ00H.
[21] D. Shepardson, "Google says it bears 'some
responsibility' after self-driving car hit bus,"
Reuters, Feb. 29, 2016; http://www.reuters.com/
article/us-google-selfdrivingcar-idUSKCN0W22DG.
[22] M. Harris, "Uber could be first to test completely driverless cars in public," IEEE Spectrum,
Sept. 14, 2015; http://spectrum.ieee.org/carsthat-think/transportation/self-driving/uber-couldbe-first-to-test-completely-driverless-cars-in-public.
[23] A. Fitzpatrick, "Why General Motors is investing $500 Million in Lyft," Time, Jan. 14, 2016;
http://time.com/4166130/general-motors-lyft/.
[24] J. Vanian, "Amazon's drone testing takes
flight in yet another country," Fortune, 2016;
http://fortune.com/2016/02/01/amazon-testingdrones-netherlands/, accessed Feb. 1, 2016.
[25] T. Williams, "Civilisation 2030: The near
future for law firms," Jomati Consultants, Nov.
2014; http://jomati.com/reports.html.
[26] J. Reilly, "Victory for Jamie Oliver in the U.S.
as McDonald's is forced to stop using 'pink slime'
in its burger recipe," Daily Mail, Jan. 7, 2015;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article2092127/Jamie-Oliver-Victory-McDonalds-stopsusing-pink-slime-burger-recipe.html.
[27] S. Kubrick and A.C. Clarke, 2001: A Space
Odyssey, 1968; http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt0062622/quotes, accessed Mar. 24, 2016.
[28] M. Wilson, "Screenplay: Planet of the Apes,"
http://www.theforbidden-zone.com/movies/pota.
txt, accessed Mar. 23, 2016.

Where are we headed? What trajectory are we on? Terra incognita:
"Here be dragons."
In the final iconic scene in Planet of the Apes, we see Taylor the
protagonist, fall to his knees and
bury his head in his hands at being
confronted with a half-sunken Statue of Liberty washed by the waves.
He thinks out aloud how this might
have all happened at the hands of
humans, and he says, "you blew it
all up..." The "you" may well end up
being the machines [28].

References

[1] S. Zuboff, In The Age Of The Smart Machine:
The Future Of Work And Power. U.S.A.: Basic,
1988.
[2] Turtle Logo (programming language) for Kids,
Codeplex, https://logo.codeplex.com/, accessed
Mar. 17, 2016.
[3] Melani, "Reflections on Ode to a Grecian
Urn", CUNY, Feb. 13, 2009; http://academic.
brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/urn.html.
[4] D. Thompson, "What jobs will the robots
take?", The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/
business/archive/2014/01/what-jobs-will-therobots-take/283239/, accessed Jan. 23, 2014.
[5] C.M. Christensen, M.E. Raynor, and R. McDonald, "What is disruptive innovation?", Harvard Business Rev., Dec. 2015; https://hbr.
org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation.
[6] R. Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near. U.S.A.:
Penguin, 2005.
[7] C.B. Frey and M.A. Osborne, "The future
of employment: how susceptible are jobs to
computerisation?" OxfordMartin, http://www.
oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/
The_Future_of_Employment.pdf, accessed Sept.
17, 2013.
[8] K. Michael and M.G. Michael, Innovative
Automatic Identification and Location-Based
Services: From Bar Codes to Chip Implants.
New York, NY: Information Science Reference,
2009.
[9] K. Michael, "Integrating islands of information
through CRM", in Internet Commerce: Digital
Models for Business, E. Lawrence et al. Eds.
Australia: Wiley, 2003, pp. 176-179.
[10] A. Kooser, "McDonald's hires 7,000 touchscreen cashiers," CNET, http://www.cnet.com/
au/news/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screencashiers/, accessed May 18, 2011.
[11] IBM, "eBusiness innovations," RFID - The
Future Market, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=eob532iEpqk, accessed Mar. 26, 2016.
[12] D. Evans, "The Internet of Things: How the
next evolution of the Internet is changing every-

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

∕

june 2016

http://http:// http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/ http://http:// http://www.wearcam.org/leonardo/award2004.htm http://www.wired https://logo.codeplex.com/ http://academic http://brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/urn.html http://www.reuters.com/article/us http://www.theatlantic.com/ http://www.reuters.com/ https://hbr http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars http://www http://oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/ http://www.time.com/4166130/general-motors-lyft/ http://www.fortune.com/2016/02/01/amazon-testing http://www.jomati.com/reports.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article http://www.cnet.com/ http://www.imdb.com/title/ https://www.youtube.com/ http://www.theforbidden-zone.com/movies/pota

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016