Excerpt from THE HISTORY OF POST-INDUSTRIAL EARTH (pp 434 ff):
“The last bastion of the illusion of self-government was responsibility for the operation of a 900 kilogram mostly-metal missile.
“Automobiles – or cars as they were called – once reached 1.5 billion in number just prior to the advent of the rush from human operation to complete computer operation. Up to that point, governments everywhere allowed anyone who could pay the fees to operate a proven, deadly weapon without supervision and without enforceable restrictions of any kind. It made the American penchant for toting absurdly powerful firearms pale in comparison.
“The date that computers, and by design the Government, took over the last freely operated car was almost exactly four years prior to the outbreak of the Third World War, also known as the Second Atomic War, or simply WWIII.
“While fiercely debated for some years during Global Recovery, historians, economists and scientists eventually gathered enough evidence to suggest that when Government seized control of an activity humanity considered more sacred than privacy, it was the watershed event that precipitated American aggression on the Korean Peninsula and eventually spread to China, India, the Middle East, Europe and finally North and South America. The only continent to escape nuclear exchange was Australia, but the Refugee Tsunami toppled the attempt at creating a World Government there leading to the Five Decades of Anarchy…”
While I’m sure many people would find this scenario absurd, I’d direct you to the links below that detail the rise in road rage and the strange connections it has. The author of the article in the StarTribune of Minnesota has a rosy view of the future of driverless cars, but given the continued restriction of movement and the increase in government surveillance of everyone, frustrated people (read “men”) who continually lose their perceived rights must respond in some way.
Anger always finds an outlet. Always. The connection between heart disease and anger, while still debated, seems to be clear. Internalized rage – when it has no release – can only lead to more and more obscure ways of release. Some may say that total computer/governmental control of all cars will effectively stamp out road rage, my contention is that the rage that finds its release on the road (the same rage that once led to barroom brawls, spousal abuse, child abuse, and Communist intent to dominate the world) will need to find another way to explode outward once road rage is effectively prohibited by complete traffic control.
It’s my contention that when this last bastion of self-control is stripped from frustrated people, there will be only one final, spasmodic outlet: provoking thermonuclear war.
Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_rage; http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/intermittent-explosive-disorder/DS00730.html; http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/196631141.html?refer=y; http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/features/rein-in-rage-anger-heart-disease; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWDqc_TLH90
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