I'd argue that this is similar to the car going from "new sector of transportation, economy, and way of life" all the way to "now with rust-proof undercoating with 0 down, 0% APR and $1000 Cash back", just much more quickly. If you were to look at the automobile industry after the arrival of the used car salesman as a solved problem due to the abundance of its superficialities, you'd miss the opportunity to build the hybrid car, the Smart car, the electric car, the hydrogen car and more, and all of the smaller incremental yet meaningful advances in car safety and technology over the years. In the larger scheme of things, Facebook is probably the model T of social networks...

The first cars were looked upon with skepticism in 1893 to 1895. But the article makes it clear that the American public was accepting of the idea by the 1900s.

We're looking at a period of 5 to 8 years to go from skeptical of an idea to accepting. This lines up with my experience with smartphones, internet, and other inventions of my lifetime.

There are other... inventions... which have had more than 10+ years to prove themselves. Maybe they'll prove themselves soon, but I have my doubts.

I don't think it's a conspiracy though. Certain things do reach saturation, or end of the S-curve, and sometimes society moves on to something else. I now use my old bike mostly instead of my expensive car, sometimes freezing my ass in winter, and I'm getting old and have kids. I could be bitter, but I'm actually quite happy that I can safely cycle in my city now.

(I know, I'm offtopic, though I do wish the downvote brigade would provide more useful feedback)

In case of cars though wrong design choices in older cars could be phased out eventually but in case of online platforms the choices will remain there for more number of people in terms of market penetration given the explosion social networks are having in the last decade. Even if vast majority of people prioritize other things over privacy, vocal and knowledgeable minority need to raise the concerns of the choices unknowingly being made by less knowledgeable people.

As for the crazy from the other side, read anything by Nicholas Negroponte at the same time.

A lot of young people, especially young hackers, think like authors of science fiction novels, where there is some grand society that they have designed, and how everything is happy. Why don't people get on board?

First, they don't trust you to be right about all the trade-offs. This mistrust only increases when you tell them to get with the times; it's clear distaste for their preferences, so it only signals that you don't value their input.

Second, even if your new society model is better, you have to get people to use it. And if the way you transition is "everyone give up your old thing, then we will all move to the new thing, trust me," they will do the opposite of trust you.

Self-driving cars are a very nice transition, because no one is forcing them into use. You can have one if you want. You can hear your friend talking about how useful they are. You can try it out, and if you don't like it you don't have to use it.

"No one owns a car" is not a nice transition, no matter how awesome you think it is in the latest novel you read about able-bodied and pretty 20-somethings. Public transportation really sucks in a lot of places precisely because making public transportation awesome gets less priority than a bunch of other things, like demanding that people get to bring their pets or bikes on board, or the homeless people using it as a place to sleep.

You can make a very good case that social justice requires letting the homeless sleep on the buses. That's fine. It may even be the right call. But it means that no one else will want to use the buses. (NYC has cops every block to keep the homeless moving along, and their public transport is pretty nice.)

Buses could be awesome, if they were managed like Google buses. I would love to take one of those to work. But look at all the grief they get from the left. Grand ideas for re-imagining society will face opposition from places you would never have imagined.

Innovation is typically more lucrative than invention. Creating whole new ideas and experiences drives the our body of knowledge further, but the rewards only start to accrue to society when those ideas are combined together with an advanced ecosystem that allows mass adoption.

I remember watching Russian TV from the US broadcast over the dial up in 1998, probably on realplayer. This was an amazing experience, magical even. I then and went back to my (CRT) TV because, well, an audio and video stream transmitted over 56k sucked.

It took another 8 years and billions of broadband infrastructure investment before YouTube launched.

I actually wonder more where are the amazing demos of today that aren’t yet economically feasible, but might get mass adoption in 40 years of infrastructure build out.

I think part of what's going on here is that the actual pattern of technology use is heavily dependent on technical and economic details that can't be known up front. It turns out that SAE level 5 autonomy is much harder than a lot of people expected, so the thing that disrupted the cab industry is not the long-anticipated robo-cab but a mechanical-turk version of that. Or consider mass adoption of flying cars and/or personal helicopters. It has been technically possible for a while, but the economics and practicalities don't work out.

I am really excited that there may be a fleet of self driving electric cars in urban areas in 10 years. It's going to be awesome. But I am willing to bet for the rest of us its going to be a more conservative change that is going to evolve over decades.

Look at today's world vs the world just 3 decades ago. No mass Internet, no WWW, no mobile phones, no eCommerce, much more smoking, much less obesity, a vastly different financial system, ... Society is apparently extremely plastic in adapting to created changes.

Most people don't need sports cars if they already have regular cars

Most people don't need smart lights if they have regular lights.

Its progress, that doesn't mean we all need to buy it right now.

Adoption was also spread unevenly. Some parts of the country moved past flip phones long before others. There are still holdouts!

Cars will be an entirely different matter. People are trained to accept internet enabled devices and ridesharing already.

Once insurance rates for manual navigation clear those of an autonomous fleet vehicle, people won’t want the oil can Henry’s experience anymore.

You can already tell most people don’t want to drive anyway. They are looking at their smartphones as they idle down the street.

Cars were once restricted to only those who could afford or justify them. Now they're far more accessible, even too accessible.

I don't understand why this is so difficult for some people to grasp.

ABS is a sideshow, not a revolution. As soon as self-driven vehicles are market-ready, we'll see a massive car park upgrade within one car-generation, which I guess is 7 years. Droves of people will ditch their old cars just for the purpose of upgrading.

Plenty of car guys were pessimistic about reduced compression, 80mph speedometers, restricted intakes, and air injection tech in the late 70s-80s. They were right - it did little to nothing on economy, safety, and smog (cats were more effective).

It's not a leap to say that touchscreens are garage in a vehicle for most functions. Out of sll my comments ever made on here, that one is likely to age the best.

"The world is asking car companies to become tech companies, without any staff changes."

There have been huge shifts in staff over the years.