Self-driving cars at the moment are designed on the "all else being equal" principle - the roads, the signs, the jaywalking pedestrians and the other drivers all remaining a constant factor. But what if the road was imbued with signage: stop here; turn there? Make a lot more sense, surely? In the week-old copy of The Economist I was reading earlier, there was a piece on training algorithms to recognise stop signs - clean stop signs, dirty, damaged and graffiti-market stop signs. Really?
There's so much plastic floating around the world's oceans that it must qualify as a natural resource by now. More easily mined than coal, I imagine. There was a conversation the other day about grinding up plastic to make road surfaces. Today, there's a piece in the Weekend FT about wearable tech. Maybe sometime soon the folk at Google working on self-driving cars are going to have the idea of self-driving roads. Not like Scalextric exactly, but car and road in harmony, exchanging data/information about traffic conditions, upcoming signals and restrictions, et cetera.
Self-driving cars at the moment are designed on the "all else being equal" principle - the roads, the signs, the jaywalking pedestrians and the other drivers all remaining a constant factor. But what if the road was imbued with signage: stop here; turn there? Make a lot more sense, surely? In the week-old copy of The Economist I was reading earlier, there was a piece on training algorithms to recognise stop signs - clean stop signs, dirty, damaged and graffiti-market stop signs. Really?
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What happens hereThis site is no longer updated weekly because I've taken to writing at Medium dot com instead. I may come back, but for now, I'm enjoying the simplicity at Medium.
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Mind you, if you get a sense of deja vu when reading my work, that may be because you've lived this life before. Where are we now? We're hurtling round the sun, held to the ground by a weak force that we don’t begin to understand, arguing about trade deals between the land masses on a planet mostly covered by water.
The dolphins must think us ridiculous. No wonder they only come to the shallow water to play with us, not to signal their most complex philosophies. More. Riddle. It takes two to make me, but when I'm made, I'm only a memory. What am I? Scroll down to find out.
Is that a catastrophe I see before me? Could be. There was a clear sky earlier, but now clouds are encroaching from the North. We could be in for a storm. More.
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Welcome. Thank you for coming. But am I the right William Essex? Click here to meet some more. Read My Shorts?
Here is yet another page of old blog posts and other writings. Sorry, but I need my metaphorical sock drawer for metaphorical socks. The link to the page is right at the end of the paragraph here.
Roads without end
Here is a passage from a review of the book The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart. I haven't read the book (yet), but the collected reviews would make a worthwhile set of political arguments in their own right. More.
State of the Union
Several commentators today saying that they've lost confidence in the US. Making their point by talking up the glories of the past. After two weeks of this administration, they're not going back.
Were they wrong, and they've seen the light? Or has the US changed? I guess the latter is the intended meaning. But we should at least acknowledge the possibility... More. Categories
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