The self-driving car is old enough to drink and drive

RCAdriverlessTwenty-one years ago, when we were shooting Triumph of the Nerds, the director, Paul Sen, introduced me to his cousin who was working at the time on a big Department of Transportation research program to build self-driving cars. Twenty-one years ago! Yet what goes around comes around and today there is nothing fresher than autonomous cars, artificial intelligence. You know, old stuff.

As you can see from this picture, driverless cars were tested by RCA and General Motors decades earlier, back in the 1950s.

What changed from 1995 until today in my view comes down to three major things: 1) 21 years of cumulative automotive research; 2) demographic changes that might […]

By |August 25th, 2016|2016, Economy, Government, mobile technology, strategy|92 Comments
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Moon Express gets FAA “approval” for Moon mission

me logoLast week Moon Express, a contender for the Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP), announced that the company had received interagency approval from the White House, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of State and other U.S. government agencies “for a maiden flight of its robotic spacecraft onto the Moon’s surface to make the first private landing on the Moon.” This heady announcement got a lot of press including this story I am linking to because it was in the New York Times, the USA’s so-called paper of record. If the Times writes “gets approval to put robotic lander on the Moon” it must be true. Only this story isn’t true. Yes, […]

By |August 11th, 2016|2016, Government, Media, Public Relations, space, Startups, strategy|39 Comments
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Remembering Brentrance (not Brexit) and Steve Jobs returns to Netflix

HeathBritons are today voting whether to remain a part of the European Union, their so-called Brexit referendum. Watching the coverage on television makes me recall a night back in 1973 when I stood in a crowd outside the Houses of Parliament while inside the chamber was being held the vote that made the UK part of what was called back then the Common Market. If today’s vote is for Brexit, that night 43 years ago was the Brentrance.

It wasn’t clear that night which way the vote would go. The Tory government of Prime Minister Edward Heath was all for the Common Market and so that’s how the vote went sometime before midnight. The […]

By |June 23rd, 2016|2016, Economy, Government, history, Politics|62 Comments
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Apple and Didi is about foreign cash and the future of motoring

DidiAppApple this week invested $1 billion in Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc., known as Didi — by far the dominant car-hailing service in China with 300 million customers. While Apple has long admitted being interested in car technology and has deals to put Apple technology into many car lines, this particular investment seems to have been a surprise to most everyone. Analysts and pundits are seeing the investment as a way for Apple to get automotive metadata or even to please the Chinese government. I think it’s more than that. I think it is a potential answer to Apple’s huge problem of foreign cash and a grab for leadership in what may well be […]

By |May 14th, 2016|2016, Companies, Finance, Government, Industry, strategy, Technology|62 Comments
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Our $27,500 drone. Do you have one, too?

IMG_0770This is the kind of thing you find on the bedroom floor of a 14 year-old boy. It’s a gift from last Christmas, still sitting in its box, not yet flown for a reason that often comes down to some variation of “but the batteries need to be charged.” I’d forgotten about it totally, which means the little drone missed the FAA’s January 20th registration deadline. Technically, I could be subject to a fine of up to $27,500. If the unregistered drone is used to commit a crime the fine could rise to $250,000 plus three years in prison.

Do you have an unregistered drone sitting in a closet somewhere?

Registration costs $5.00 […]

By |April 15th, 2016|2016, Gadgets, Government|43 Comments
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