Many years ago if you spilled something on a floor you had to clean it up with a cloth or a mop which could be tedious especially if it was something oily, what with all the mopping and rinsing not to mention the hand-scalding water. Then someone had a great idea and kitchen roll was invented. A God-send to many a downtrodden housewife back in the day. So, instead of all the wiping and rinsing, the spill could be mopped up and the sodden paper dumped straight into the bin. Voila! Another great weapon in the feminist arsenal, helping to free women everywhere from a little bit more of the old daily drudge. (I would nearly bet you could find a direct correlation between the appearance of kitchen roll and the rise in separation and divorce in Ireland) Anyway, as good as the kitchen roll was, it did have a bit of a downside, the paper was a bit thin and tended to fall apart. So, the manufacturers had a bit of a competition to improve the product. Lo and behold, they did. Over time kitchen roll improved so much that it could actually be rinsed out and re-used.......just like a cloth.....well....er!
Anyway, one of the girls at work mentioned seeing a driver-less car on a television programme recently. This is the latest thing in car technology and the way we will all be driving or not, in the future. So, I was thinking about this and thinking about how once a thing is invented, it inevitably keeps being updated and improved as little flaws in the original idea surface. So, we start with a driver-less car but we can't go completely driver-less because of the unexpected road accident or event that may disrupt the journey so the driver still has to be able to take control of the vehicle as needed. This is where the driver-less car is as we speak. So imagine in the future, we'll have all these driver-less cars on the road, all going different places and sometimes to the same places like a football match or a concert. Now wouldn't it be a good idea if we could take all the cars that are going to the same places and find a way to join them up so they could all go together and only one driver would be needed to keep control which logic would dictate would be the car in front.Well, it makes sense to me.
Then someone might have the idea of making the seats adjustable so that over long journeys people could lie down and sleep arriving at their destination well-rested and refreshed. Still with me, ok then, let's take it another step further, what if there were special roads or tracks set aside for them to separate them from other road traffic like tractors and horses and the old Luddites who are still driving full time in their manual cars' This would in all probability, make driver-less cars even safer.
So, we have driver-less cars which can be joined up to other driver-less cars when they're all going to the same place which only need one driver to maintain control. Not forgetting that you can lie down and sleep,or read,or do your tax return (if that is your wont) and they have their own special road to drive on......hmmm.....now that I think about it, isn't that a train??? The future, it's where we're headed.