The transportation swarm needs to know where all of its individual participants are.
I'm not talking about some great centralized scheme here. But in cities, in neighborhoods, the machines that are moving people and stuff around the roads want to know, with some urgency, where they are relative to all of the other machines participating in this crowded, fast-moving local relationship.
And it's sort of silly that so much of the great mobile mass remains positionally unaware, that so little has happened yet. Hence the defect. Because just about all the necessary technology is available now for cheap or free. Lots of interesting companies are converging into this meshy, swarmy, flocky future. Inrix. Dash. Zipcar. TeleAtlas - er - TomTom. Navteq - er - Nokia. Garmin. SiRF. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah. Blah.
Before very long the machines will be positioning themselves without human interference, of course. Satellite and RF signals provide location. Cruise and Lane Control handle the easy driving. We need to help with intersections and special situations, but mostly we won't be so involved with the driving details any more. Because the cars know where they are, where they're going, how to get there.
Because this is how it looks when the machines start waking up, silly passenger.
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