A world of change

Perhaps you’ve noticed the increasingly frequent reports in the news media of advances being made in the development of workable self-driving automobiles. Such cars are being test-driven in cities around the country and everybody, from manufacturers to politicians, is showing a growing interest in this coming change to our lives.

I am not impressed, unless I can send the car by itself to Publix to pick up groceries, or to the post office to drop off a package. If I have to go along for the trip, then I prefer to drive. Your car, you can drive. My car, I’ll drive. Self-driving car? No, thanks.

My late wife said, on more than one occasion, that I was the most resistant to change of anyone she’d ever known. I readily admitted then, and I admit now, that she was exactly right. I know that change is sometimes necessary, but I feel that it should, like the butterfly in its pupal stage emerging from the chrysalis, have to work and struggle to be accepted in the outer world. I’m willing to do my part by acting as the hard shell that is the chrysalis. I have long experience at this, often in the past loudly expressing derision when shown proposed changes that I was certain were foolish. Sometimes it turned out I was wrong.

Many years ago, I stood on a hill on the back side of the Fort Benning reservation and watched a tactical exercise. Two small Army helicopters, with machine guns experimentally attached to their skids, popped up periodically from behind a ridge and fired onto an attacking unit’s objective area. I was observing the early stages in the development of armed helicopters and the doctrine for their use. I walked away declaring it to be the dumbest idea I’d ever seen. It was obvious that in a real shooting war, these small aircraft would be shot out of the sky the first time they buzzed up into view. A few years later, on the other side of the world, I found myself offering quick but fervent prayers of thanksgiving for armed helicopters. Turned out they worked amazingly well.

Desk-top computers were in a class of their own. I not only accepted them, I fell in love with them. Not with their internal workings but with what they could do for me. It may have been that I was brainwashed when I was informed that the computer would make the slide rule, that instrument of Satan, obsolete. I had been so cowed by the slide rule that, in training for the employment of nuclear weapons, I had to give up on using the slip stick and depend on my shaky and time-consuming skills at math when making the interminable required calculations.

When mobile phones entered my world, I was as dismissive as I’d once been of the armed helicopter. Having come along in a time and place where telephones, if available at all, were likely to be in two pieces and activated by a hand crank, I thought something with a rotary dial or, better yet, push buttons was the ultimate. Why would anybody need a phone in their car or, worse, actually on their person? I often remember that opinion these days when I pull out my phone to check the weather or take a picture. Or even to make a call.

You can see that my record for picking winners is at best spotty. So if you’re into investing in modern technology, you might not want to follow my lead. If you’re convinced that the self-driving automobile is for you, as an investment or as a possession, be my guest. But don’t plan to take me along for the ride.

This story was originally published February 18, 2017 at 5:21 PM with the headline "A world of change."