Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And you know, Julie,
Speaker 1: I was. I've been thinking about The Time Machine a
Speaker 1: lot lately in preparation with this particular podcast. I have
Speaker 1: you ever read H. G. Wells The Time Machine? I
Speaker 1: have not. Oh well, I had not until like the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. We ended up like picking it
Speaker 1: up and and uh, you know, it's it holds up
Speaker 1: surprisingly well. Like it's it's a much much more beautiful
Speaker 1: novel than one might expect if you're not, you know,
Speaker 1: really familiar with with the actual writings of H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells and are more familiar with just his ideas and
Speaker 1: they end up popping up in our movies and pop culture.
Speaker 1: And not to say that the ideas are not fabulous,
Speaker 1: but but for an older book, it it holds up
Speaker 1: really well. And one of the key ideas in it
Speaker 1: when when our time traveler character Um travels an enormous
Speaker 1: distance into the future, he finds that society has a
Speaker 1: surface world and a sub world, and the surface world
Speaker 1: is all tiny little dream people just having a great time,
Speaker 1: while the underworld is the domain of the morlocks. And
Speaker 1: these are just hulking monsters that do all the grunt work.
Speaker 1: They maintain the machinery, so all the pretty stuff on
Speaker 1: the surface, all of the necessary mechanics and infrastructure underneath,
Speaker 1: and uh in the in the book, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a well, it is a nightmaric vision because it's because
Speaker 1: the people on the surface are stupid from not having
Speaker 1: to do anything in the people underground or monsters. And
Speaker 1: it all has to do with you know, the the
Speaker 1: you know, what is the you know, the industrialization of
Speaker 1: of society doing to us. But um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not arguing that having cannibalistic creatures underground doing all of
Speaker 1: our work is a great idea. Yeah, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. Um. But yet you see merit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see there's a little merit because I mean, let's
Speaker 1: face it, what's what what do we prefer? Do we
Speaker 1: like power lines or bury you know, up in the
Speaker 1: air or buried power lines. I gotta tell you, I
Speaker 1: like esthetic h harmony. Yeah, so the more stuff we
Speaker 1: can bury, the better, right, we put our put our
Speaker 1: sewer lines underground, we put our you know, our power
Speaker 1: lines won't available underground. Um, if it's if it's kind
Speaker 1: of unsightly, then then let's see if we can put
Speaker 1: it in the basement. Right. So, Um, there's this really
Speaker 1: interesting idea UM of the underground automated Highway, which basically says, hey,
Speaker 1: let's take our highway system and bury it underground. And
Speaker 1: then and then on top of that, well, it will
Speaker 1: also be basically robotic, so that it'll you know, the
Speaker 1: cars will drive themselves. It's all underground and everywhere that
Speaker 1: we currently have a big you know, you know, eight
Speaker 1: lane wide stretch of asphalt. You know that that can
Speaker 1: be just you know, grass again, or a city park
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever whatever we want to make of it,
Speaker 1: so that the sur is can be beautiful and more
Speaker 1: natural and we can just bury all of our necessary infrastructure.
Speaker 1: I like it. I love this idea of these rolling
Speaker 1: hills you calic view, and underneath all the there's a
Speaker 1: slight rumbling because everybody is hanging out underground getting from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. Yeah, and probably and since
Speaker 1: they don't have to drive the car, they get to
Speaker 1: you know, get to lounge back and read read that
Speaker 1: book even wanting to read or or or or you know,
Speaker 1: play video games or checkers or or you know, talk
Speaker 1: to your child. You know, the sky's the limit. Anything
Speaker 1: you want to internet, surf the internet, anything you want
Speaker 1: to do, take a nap, uh, you know, just not driving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in this scenario, I definitely see a lot of tinted windows.
Speaker 1: I have to say, well, or just no windows? You know,
Speaker 1: what do you have to see underground? Just more? Oh no,
Speaker 1: I think it's I don't know that i'd want to
Speaker 1: see into my fellow passenger passengers got cars, you know,
Speaker 1: when they have so many choices of activities to partake in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a frightening enough proposition, just you know, on the
Speaker 1: connector exactly. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you on that.
Speaker 1: So it's on one level, I we both have a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about this vision, especially I mean especially
Speaker 1: when you factor in that some experts and and real
Speaker 1: supporters of the idea say will happen fifty two years
Speaker 1: extremely optimistic. Um. But but also there's this you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you start talking about, oh, let's let's
Speaker 1: automate our transportation and put it underground, you know, instantly
Speaker 1: think of like subway systems, like preferably the really good ones,
Speaker 1: um like London, um. Where Yeah, it's like the idea
Speaker 1: of taking an automated mode of transportation that's underground and
Speaker 1: out of sight to get from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: It happens every day in major metropolitan cities and goes
Speaker 1: off without a hitch. Um. And I'm actually thinking of
Speaker 1: two other examples, one great, one not so good, and
Speaker 1: one is the chunnel right right, I mean that connects
Speaker 1: um Paris or Brussels. Can't remember, um, but Paris stuff
Speaker 1: Paris and done and it's brilliant. Right. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about getting on a boat. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, in a couple of hours, you're there, right.
Speaker 1: They didn't actually though there at one point there was
Speaker 1: the you know, the idea of building a bridge, but
Speaker 1: that basically instead of taking the the sea route, you
Speaker 1: can just take the underground highway, right yeah. And it's lovely, um.
Speaker 1: And it's proof that it can be done. You can
Speaker 1: build a giant underground road. I mean we have you know,
Speaker 1: some some really impressive tunnels, uh, you know, mountain tunnels
Speaker 1: in the world that connect areas and you know, we
Speaker 1: we have the technology, it can be done, but is
Speaker 1: it really feasible? Right, And that's where I think about
Speaker 1: the big dig which in Boston, they took the artery
Speaker 1: that was going around the city and they rerouted it
Speaker 1: underneath the city, underneath the city center, and it was
Speaker 1: horribly expensive. Um. There are all sorts of problems that
Speaker 1: continue to this day, leaks, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And actually they think that it actually uh meets traffic
Speaker 1: even worse because it allowed so many more people to
Speaker 1: dump into the highways underneath. So you know, any Boston
Speaker 1: nights out there, shout out and let us know about that.
Speaker 1: But UM, my understanding is that it probably wasn't the
Speaker 1: perfect project for this. Now another but but a big
Speaker 1: plus to this um like dissecting it a little and
Speaker 1: like ignoring the underground aspect for a minute, um, which
Speaker 1: which is in itself actually pretty great because when when
Speaker 1: you look at the amount of of the world that
Speaker 1: is taken up by roads, it's pretty staggering. Well, and
Speaker 1: not to mention the fact that our population is exploding,
Speaker 1: and of course we don't have much more land to
Speaker 1: spare in terms of developing in any more buildings or roadways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Uh. And when you look at accidents, I mean,
Speaker 1: the roads tend to be pretty dangerous mainly because of
Speaker 1: human error. I think it's like n of of accidents
Speaker 1: can are generally be attributed to human fault. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: a World or Help organization has estimated that it costs
Speaker 1: the United States two and fifty billion dollars a year
Speaker 1: because of traffic accidents. And of course, the larger the population,
Speaker 1: the more cars on the road and the more futilities. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you could, if you could, we can actually
Speaker 1: get to the point. And I think the automated roadways
Speaker 1: is that's far less far fetched. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of as we'll discuss a lot of Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of the technologies are are on their way or even
Speaker 1: already here. Uh for that to be a very real possibility.
Speaker 1: And again, you take the you take the wheel away
Speaker 1: from dangerous humans, put it in the hands of a
Speaker 1: of a of a robotic system, of an automated system,
Speaker 1: and uh, and you're gonna have much safer roads when
Speaker 1: it's working. So if we were to do an underground highway,
Speaker 1: what would need Well, um, first of all the big
Speaker 1: things that automated the highway system, because you can't bear
Speaker 1: to bury it. We must first have it, you know. So,
Speaker 1: um so this and when we talk about automated highway system,
Speaker 1: we're in visioning roads that have buried magnetic sensors that
Speaker 1: were contained them with the cars onboard computer. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Much of the technology that that we're talking about has
Speaker 1: been around for for more than a decade. Back in
Speaker 1: the n U S Department of Transportation sponsored the National
Speaker 1: Automated Highway System Consortium. And uh, this was just a
Speaker 1: test of a number of different technologies you know where
Speaker 1: it's um where they they equipped like eight cars with
Speaker 1: several different automated driving systems that included a radar to
Speaker 1: detect other vehicles, ut you know, magnets like we said,
Speaker 1: visual sensors to follow the length of highway marked and
Speaker 1: uh and more and like buried sensors and visual markers
Speaker 1: as well. And over the course of the demonstration, the
Speaker 1: vehicles travel to combine eight thousand miles and carried four
Speaker 1: thousand passengers without incident when out went off without a hitch,
Speaker 1: right yeah, yeah, no problems. And that's the really cool part. Right,
Speaker 1: So we have the technology, we know it can be done,
Speaker 1: and that's the first thing that we need, right and
Speaker 1: we have it. Yeah, and a lot of the other technologies,
Speaker 1: I mean self driving. The the the dream of the
Speaker 1: self driving car is like, think of it like a
Speaker 1: wall composed of many bricks. And a lot of those
Speaker 1: bricks are already in existing automobiles, especially the more you know,
Speaker 1: the higher priced vehicles, um uh you know, especially when
Speaker 1: you get into like really complicated electronic deferentials, but then
Speaker 1: also anti lock breaks, um you know, even cruise control.
Speaker 1: These are all examples like a little, little or substantial
Speaker 1: bricks in this wall I think we're building. Um. And
Speaker 1: actually to to talk about the automated highway system in Japan,
Speaker 1: the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization NATO is
Speaker 1: researching and developing automatic driving and driving information and carrying
Speaker 1: out these proof of concept test right now, right so
Speaker 1: they're well on their way to developing it. A few
Speaker 1: years back, we also have the the DARPA Urban Challenge UM,
Speaker 1: which was all about taking robotic vehicles, putting them in
Speaker 1: an urban or mock urban environment and having them successfully
Speaker 1: navigate and uh and and out of that has come
Speaker 1: a lot of the same people that were involved in
Speaker 1: these The successful aspects of this operation have gone on
Speaker 1: to say, work with Google, so you have like the
Speaker 1: Google robotic car. Yeah, and it's probably should be mentioned
Speaker 1: to you that the Darker Grand Challenge was sponsored by
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. Yes, and of course that we
Speaker 1: start to think about it, that makes sense because they'd
Speaker 1: love to have some self driving convoys. I mean that
Speaker 1: would save a lot of lives. Yeah. Yeah, they've put
Speaker 1: they've been been some pretty I'm not sure what the
Speaker 1: current plan is, but they've put some pretty ambitious um
Speaker 1: uh plans in place about automating their their their wheeled
Speaker 1: vehicles in the military. And of course we already haven't
Speaker 1: a number of you know, we have the U a
Speaker 1: v S like the Predator and the Reaper up in
Speaker 1: the air. So so there's been a lot of work
Speaker 1: going into it because you know, like take take the
Speaker 1: human out of the equation, get a robotic vehicle on
Speaker 1: the road, right, So we're making strikes in that sense.
Speaker 1: We we've got the automated highway system, We've we've got
Speaker 1: the technology for that. Uh, we are we've got the
Speaker 1: technology for driverless cars and uh. The other thing that
Speaker 1: we need is improved tunnel boring machines. So if you're
Speaker 1: going to go underground, what are you gonna do? I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got to You've got to have something that's massive
Speaker 1: and powerful that can bore its way through rock. And
Speaker 1: these things are incredible looking there, like the giant tubes.
Speaker 1: They look like worms with teeth and not like beetlejuice worms.
Speaker 1: Put more like the sandworms from Doom Warms with teeth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They also remind me of the scene in Labyrinth where
Speaker 1: the cleaner thing comes through the tunnel, you know, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're incredible looking. Um, they've got rotating
Speaker 1: disks at the front that have cutting teeth so they
Speaker 1: can cut through the rock, and then the rock particles
Speaker 1: fall into a conveyor belt and it's whisked away. And
Speaker 1: then they've got hydraulic feet that essentially push uh they
Speaker 1: have touched themself to the tunnel and forced their way through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like those worms from Tremors, except their robotic yes,
Speaker 1: yes exactly, or mechanical rather, but I guess they're not
Speaker 1: so fulware yeah right yet yeah. Um, but of course
Speaker 1: the problem with that is that they're super expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just uh, like laying out a link, the tunnel
Speaker 1: can can be extremely pricy. So if we had improved
Speaker 1: tunnel boring machines in other words, we had maybe more
Speaker 1: efficient ones where the cost came down, that that would
Speaker 1: be in the realm of possibility, right right, And then uh,
Speaker 1: but then they're also they also say that we would
Speaker 1: really need zero emission vehicles if we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: massive underground highway system. Uh, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: keep the gift to manage the air down there, right,
Speaker 1: They like a bunch of exhaust would be awful, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean, even if you're like sealed in the view,
Speaker 1: you know, it shouldn't be like deep sea diving or
Speaker 1: going to the other planet. You know, they want to
Speaker 1: add some you know, monicum of of of of air
Speaker 1: quality down there in the tunnels. Um. You know, otherwise
Speaker 1: you're gonna have, you know, people evolving to breathe it
Speaker 1: and becoming a you know, a hideous underground cannibalistic race
Speaker 1: if nobody wants really, we don't want it. This presentation
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. But
Speaker 1: back to the automated UM vehicle system for a second.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one thing, as always with any technology,
Speaker 1: to say, here's the prototype doing its thing in a
Speaker 1: control environment. But to unroll that to to to say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like with the the the
Speaker 1: digital TV ent and a thing. You know, if someone
Speaker 1: were to say, all right, by this October, only automated
Speaker 1: vehicles on the road, that would be unrealistic. Like it
Speaker 1: would be unrealistic if you were to say, okay, guys, uh,
Speaker 1: starting this October, if you don't have cruise control, you
Speaker 1: can't be on the road legally, like that would inconvenience
Speaker 1: a large number of people and then rightly so right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the outcry would be, of course understood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like the question would be, all right, we're you
Speaker 1: gonna pay to have cruise control installed on my vehicle?
Speaker 1: A you're gonna buy me a new vehicle? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and then are you gonna to say nothing of the
Speaker 1: costs of say, all right, now, all government or state
Speaker 1: owned vehicles have to have cruise control, and then you
Speaker 1: know the ones that don't need to be fixed. So
Speaker 1: i'm i'm. The estimation seems to be that you would
Speaker 1: end up having, say like a in the same way
Speaker 1: we have an h OV lane, you would have an
Speaker 1: automated vehicle lane, so you could find a way to
Speaker 1: slowly integrate into into have to have your automated systems
Speaker 1: more or less alongside um the normal drivers. Huh. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if I have my BMW two dollar collision a
Speaker 1: version vehicle, yeah, then I could join that lane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could travel down like Ritchie Highway, and and and
Speaker 1: I only drive with other robots. Because the other thing
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is that, you know, it's one
Speaker 1: thing to come up with an automated system where you know,
Speaker 1: individual robotic cars drive alongside other robotic vehicles, but then
Speaker 1: it's it's a different thing entirely to say, all right,
Speaker 1: these robotic vehicles are driving alongside crazy people who are
Speaker 1: driving their own vehicles. You know. It's it's that you
Speaker 1: have to account for so many other things, right, because
Speaker 1: the idea is to lower the incidents of traffic collisions. Right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, in the real world setting, does that negate
Speaker 1: it entirely? Yeah, some like crazy man driving around flipping
Speaker 1: off robot cars because they're inconveniencing him because their their
Speaker 1: draw driving the speed limit because they're programmed to write, right,
Speaker 1: and who gets the ticket? It's a robot car yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: who Yeah, who gets the ticket? Who? Who's responsible in
Speaker 1: an accident? Um? You know, is it the manufacturer? Is
Speaker 1: that you know what what does the driver have to
Speaker 1: do with it at that point? Yeah? Which makes me
Speaker 1: think about the Google car, right because it has been developed,
Speaker 1: right and uh it naturally did there was one incidence
Speaker 1: of an accident. These are truly driverless cars, like they
Speaker 1: have them cruising around San Francisco with no one in them,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that they one of them did
Speaker 1: get rear ended by someone. So it does beg that question,
Speaker 1: like who's responsible, Like with if Google starts working with
Speaker 1: Toyota or Ford to give them their technology. You know,
Speaker 1: if I've got a banged up car, who's gonna Who's
Speaker 1: gonna assume responsibility? Right now? One thing that comes to
Speaker 1: mind in all of this when we again we we
Speaker 1: talk about like underground automated highways, and you think of subways,
Speaker 1: you think of automated highways on the surface, and you
Speaker 1: end up sort you think about trains, you know, and
Speaker 1: uh so on one on one level, I want to
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that wants to make the argument, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is all stupid. Why don't we just have awesome
Speaker 1: public transportation. But that flies in the face of especially
Speaker 1: of the like the very like American idea that you know,
Speaker 1: I want my own car. I want to control that
Speaker 1: environment because like the train ride this morning, I listened
Speaker 1: to my own music, I read my book and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of shut everybody off. But then again,
Speaker 1: I also had to like stand like ear to ear
Speaker 1: with with some random stranger. Um the platform had to
Speaker 1: weight on the platform was you know, my schedule was
Speaker 1: entirely at the mercy of whatever Martha was doing this morning,
Speaker 1: and you had to enter the social contract, right like,
Speaker 1: you know there, I'm sure there was no belching. I'm
Speaker 1: going to assume you have not written Heart of Lately
Speaker 1: from you. Yes, yes, there was no belching on my part.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, I guess you
Speaker 1: could make that arguments like, man, I wish I could
Speaker 1: ride my own little slight you know, capsule, so I
Speaker 1: could just totally let myself go on the ride, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like, but is it but is it possible
Speaker 1: to continue to pursue this, this American ideal of freedom
Speaker 1: and cars into the future, you know, like this is
Speaker 1: a very cool system. Driverless cars are amazing, but you know,
Speaker 1: is it something that we can sustain? Yeah? Just does
Speaker 1: the car eventually just become way too expensive? I mean
Speaker 1: cars are pretty freaking expensive now. Um. So, um, you know,
Speaker 1: at what point does it just is become beyond the
Speaker 1: pet the pail, you know, just something that an individual
Speaker 1: cannot own a car, which actually you look at some
Speaker 1: interesting models with like uh, you know, a car rental
Speaker 1: or shared use situations like one level like zip car,
Speaker 1: which is already in use a lot of places. Um
Speaker 1: and uh. And then there are other neat ideas like
Speaker 1: you you see examples of like stackable car systems systems
Speaker 1: where you say, you you fly into a city, check
Speaker 1: out a vehicle to airport, and then check it back
Speaker 1: in in another check in station. Uh. They're a number
Speaker 1: of different kind of like the d with bicycles. In
Speaker 1: some cities, there are a number of different um experimental Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Um. There's also something called the road trains,
Speaker 1: which are basic basically groups of cars with similar destinations.
Speaker 1: And Volvo is actually working on an EU initiative for
Speaker 1: road safety and has created a platoon road train and
Speaker 1: so these are guided by a lead vehicle and that's
Speaker 1: being driven by a human um but the other cars
Speaker 1: follow in succession, and they all have computer controlled cars
Speaker 1: that are electronically tethered in this sort of convoy, and
Speaker 1: each vehicle in the platoon measures the distance, speed, and
Speaker 1: erection the vehicle directly in front of it, so it
Speaker 1: adjusts its movements to stay information. And of course what's
Speaker 1: the weak linked here. If the lead car goes out
Speaker 1: of gets out of control, or has a breakdown, then
Speaker 1: you don't know where you're gonna end up. Yeah. Of course,
Speaker 1: no Volo is built in a breathalyzer, so if if
Speaker 1: that lead person is drunk, then they can't even start
Speaker 1: the car. But it reminds me of like some of
Speaker 1: the situations where you have dolphins or whales beaching themselves.
Speaker 1: Some of those have been tied to like a dominant uh,
Speaker 1: the lead whale becoming disoriented and it just like it
Speaker 1: ends up on the on the beach and then they
Speaker 1: push you a well meaning humans come out push everything
Speaker 1: back out to sea. They just wind up on the
Speaker 1: beach again because the lead vehicle is broken, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Because there's always going to be some sort of user error.
Speaker 1: So I mean to hit your wagon to someone I
Speaker 1: don't know how I'd feel about it. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to know the person, you know, um find out if
Speaker 1: they had any sort of agenda. And and plus it
Speaker 1: sort of makes it a train, right yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that that's the concept of a train. You just have
Speaker 1: a bunch of car ours um that are fixed together,
Speaker 1: rather than that the actual trains. But then the idea
Speaker 1: of completely removing humans from the equation that also has
Speaker 1: some problems as well, right yeah, I mean, actually, think
Speaker 1: about pilots. They thought the automated system right, and essentially, uh,
Speaker 1: that was put in there so that pilots didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about a thing. They could take off, they
Speaker 1: could land, they didn't have to do anything. It was
Speaker 1: it was all going to happen for them. But what
Speaker 1: they found is that the pilots, when they didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do, became really kind of like daisical. They
Speaker 1: got sleepy, they weren't paying attention, and so they said, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this actually is not a good idea. What
Speaker 1: we need is for the pilots to assume the responsibility
Speaker 1: on takeoff and landing. And of course we've got the
Speaker 1: automated system and that's the backup so that made things
Speaker 1: a lot safer. Yeah, I think some of the that
Speaker 1: you look at some of the plans for you know,
Speaker 1: automated highways, and I think it would it would kind
Speaker 1: of resemble that because obviously, like the automated highway would
Speaker 1: not necessarily begin at your driveway, you know, in the
Speaker 1: same way that you don't actually get the highway to,
Speaker 1: you know, take the entrance ramp. So it would be
Speaker 1: something along those lines where, yeah, you you drive through
Speaker 1: your neighborhood, you drive through your town, maybe you you know,
Speaker 1: you go whole months without using the automated highway system
Speaker 1: and then you you know, you launch onto it, right,
Speaker 1: You're right. Could never purely be you'd have to have
Speaker 1: some sort of override system that you could switch between.
Speaker 1: So but that's I mean, that's just interesting. You can
Speaker 1: you imagine that sort of studies that would come out
Speaker 1: of that, like when your brain has to switch back
Speaker 1: on and and start to look at distances and you know,
Speaker 1: and work again basically. Yeah, Um, So I don't know,
Speaker 1: And I wonder too, like with with truckers and um
Speaker 1: and I wonder we may have some trucker listeners out there.
Speaker 1: I would I hope it did um, Like, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you would end up in a situation where like
Speaker 1: truck driver drives the cargo to the the automated highway
Speaker 1: system and then kind of gets off, you know, exits
Speaker 1: the vehicle, let's it carry, and then it just automated
Speaker 1: carries the cargo across the country and then as it's
Speaker 1: lead being, somebody else jumps on. So you end up
Speaker 1: with just sort of local um truck trucking operators. Well,
Speaker 1: and truck drivers don't get mad at me. But actually,
Speaker 1: in this scenario too, you wouldn't necessarily need to have
Speaker 1: a truck driver, right Like, if you had a point
Speaker 1: A to B and if the company did like a
Speaker 1: place where you loaded and unloaded, then you could just
Speaker 1: send a truck ten thousand miles or maybe shorter three
Speaker 1: thousand miles you know, down the road and it gets
Speaker 1: to the drop off point and you don't I mean really,
Speaker 1: in theory, you wouldn't necessarily have to have someone there.
Speaker 1: So but again, what does this sound like? Yeah, a train, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's a human on the train. But true, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean, you know, just having the technology, I mean,
Speaker 1: which what are you doing is you're sort of duplicating
Speaker 1: this other system that exists. Yeah. And it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: how you know, we kept hanging onto our car as
Speaker 1: we you know, the car became this important part of
Speaker 1: not just American culture. It's just you know, it's just
Speaker 1: but but especially American culture. UM. And and so I
Speaker 1: can I tend to only see like an underground automated
Speaker 1: highway um coming into being if if we just continue
Speaker 1: to have, like any an increasing attachment to our vehicles,
Speaker 1: like like an religious attachment to it, like like one's
Speaker 1: total the total of oneself worth. Uh and uh, it's
Speaker 1: just like spiritually attached to the automobile. Um. That's the
Speaker 1: main way I see something like this like truly taking shape.
Speaker 1: Do you think it could happen? Well, it could. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of things can happen, you know, But
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it comes down to we do
Speaker 1: we do we have the money to spend on it?
Speaker 1: Do we want to spend the money on it? Is
Speaker 1: it worth it to us? You know, it's the same
Speaker 1: argument about like going back to the moon or or
Speaker 1: sending man manumissions to Mars. You know, we could we
Speaker 1: could do it, yeah, but but are we is it?
Speaker 1: Does it really make sense to our values, right, And
Speaker 1: we're having this conversation right now. In a hundred years,
Speaker 1: fifty years, fifty years, it could be in existence. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean, does make sense that you would start
Speaker 1: to adopt some of the technology now and then you know,
Speaker 1: with maybe two years, three hundred years. Who knows that
Speaker 1: a complete overhaul would have happened. I don't know. We'll
Speaker 1: see or maybe we won't. Somebody will see. I hope
Speaker 1: I see it. I have to say, I love the
Speaker 1: idea of it just cruising along and being able to
Speaker 1: do you know, read or or whatnot. It's a lovely proposition.
Speaker 1: But then, but then also like maybe you don't have
Speaker 1: to travel around as much in the future you're doing
Speaker 1: everything digitally, right, or like beaming your consciousness into your
Speaker 1: clone body that works at the office. Well, I know,
Speaker 1: but sometimes a hologram just doesn't suffice and you actually
Speaker 1: have to to go somewhere. Okay, yeah, well, hey, we
Speaker 1: have an article about this on the website called how automated,
Speaker 1: How underground Automated? No, it's called we will we drive
Speaker 1: on your ground automated highways And you wrote it. I
Speaker 1: wrote it, so it's it's even worse than I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name of it. But but yeah, so I
Speaker 1: go into a lot of the same facts that we're
Speaker 1: covering here. We also have an excellent article on automated
Speaker 1: dri driverless cars aren't any driving, So just drop drop
Speaker 1: any of that language into the search bar on the
Speaker 1: on the homepage and you'll get some cool results here. Yeah. So, hey,
Speaker 1: I have just a little listener mail here, and I
Speaker 1: feel like we're probably going a little long, so I
Speaker 1: don't want to I can't read a lot of it.
Speaker 1: And we actually received a lot of cool stuff, uh
Speaker 1: regarding our dream Inception podcasts, which talked about problem solving
Speaker 1: that takes place while we sleep in our dreams and
Speaker 1: sometimes gives us those key breakthroughs for uh creative endeavors,
Speaker 1: be they artistic or scientific in nature, or even emotional.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm distriguring out how to you know,
Speaker 1: orchestrate your your own life. So we received a lot
Speaker 1: of emails, and I'm not gonna have time to read
Speaker 1: all of them, but I thank everybody for sending them in.
Speaker 1: We received several things from programmers. UH. A listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Abraham says, I'm a I'm a design
Speaker 1: engineer mechanical and I find that as I am working
Speaker 1: on design, designing complex design end and I cannot conjure
Speaker 1: up a solution during the day, I have a Eureka
Speaker 1: moment during my sleep. Sometimes this happens with just more
Speaker 1: than work as well, life issues, problems with hobby builds,
Speaker 1: on airplanes and such. So I thought that was interesting
Speaker 1: from Abraham Um. Then we also heard from a listener
Speaker 1: by the name of Griffin Um and he says, for
Speaker 1: my own story, I used to be a software developer
Speaker 1: earlier on when I was learning rapidly and using my
Speaker 1: new knowledge. I recall so many episodes where I woke
Speaker 1: up fully aware that I had been working on understanding
Speaker 1: a problem and solving it all night long in bed.
Speaker 1: One very powerful one was an understanding of multidimensional data rays.
Speaker 1: At the time of this dream, I saw myself hand
Speaker 1: handing myself a glowing fruit, and as I took it
Speaker 1: from another me, I said thank you, and the other
Speaker 1: me said you're welcome. That was a fun challenge, and
Speaker 1: the other met cartwheeled away. So that's that's just I.
Speaker 1: I love that as well, So I thank Griffin for
Speaker 1: sending that in and we also heard from listener. My
Speaker 1: name of Jim, and he was a software developer at
Speaker 1: A T and T Bell Bell Lads in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. He says, that was about twenty seven at
Speaker 1: the time, so I was still learning source code. UH
Speaker 1: version and control systems were just starting to be used,
Speaker 1: and they weren't as easy to use as they are today.
Speaker 1: We had about twenty five developers all making changes to
Speaker 1: our software on the daily basis. The challenges was to
Speaker 1: gather all of those changes and produce a stable version
Speaker 1: of the source code that would compile, link and run.
Speaker 1: It was like trying to hurt cats, he says. One
Speaker 1: evening in March, I went to bed a bit earlier
Speaker 1: than usual, around ten pm, UH. I was drifting off
Speaker 1: to sleep in an idea flashed to my head and
Speaker 1: it woke me up like a bulk of lightning. I
Speaker 1: knew how to solve the problem. It was obvious and
Speaker 1: extremely elegant. It was so simple that I was sure
Speaker 1: there was surely that I was missing something. So I
Speaker 1: ran to work the next day and subjected my UH
Speaker 1: poor boss to a detailed whiteboard description. I showed it
Speaker 1: off to several people and convinced my teammates to give
Speaker 1: it a try. And it turns out the idea of
Speaker 1: worth like a charm for it, and the idea led
Speaker 1: to a tool used widely in a T and T.
Speaker 1: So it's very cool. Yeah, so in a very interesting
Speaker 1: real life stories. They're about dreams helping us to solve
Speaker 1: our problems and the and the kind of stuff that's
Speaker 1: going on in our own mind. I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: need a better excuse to sleep and dream, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a problem, go to sleep, sleep on it,
Speaker 1: just like your grandma said. Yeah, just like she did. So, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you have some interesting feedback about about dreams, or
Speaker 1: about the dream of the underground Automated Highway and UH
Speaker 1: or any kind of technological or planning um fixes that
Speaker 1: could help our our commuting woes than dropped by the
Speaker 1: Facebook or the Twitter, we are Blow the Mind on
Speaker 1: both of those and we'd love to hear from you. Also,
Speaker 1: feel free to drop us a line at Blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
Speaker 1: on the podcast on in the upper right corner of
Speaker 1: our homepage. The house Stuff Works iPhone app has a RYE.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes, m