When vehicles drive themselves, they become venues—unlocking unexpected
experiences no engineer planned, and entire industries built on motion, not destination.
By Futurist Thomas Frey
Every transformative technology creates a second-order invention that nobody saw coming.
The automobile gave us the drive-in movie. The internet gave us the flash mob. The smartphone gave us the pop-up bar. These weren’t the inventions the engineers were working on — they were what happened when creative humans got their hands on a new capability and started asking questions the original designers never thought to ask.
Self-driving vehicles are about to produce one of the most gloriously unexpected second-order inventions in recent memory.
The driverless party bus.
Think about what autonomous vehicles actually change, beyond the obvious. They don’t just move you from place to place without a human at the wheel. They transform the interior of a vehicle from a place where someone has to remain alert and sober into a fully social space where every occupant is free to do whatever they want for the duration of the journey. Nobody is responsible for getting everyone home safely. The vehicle is.
For the first time in the history of motorized transportation, a moving vehicle becomes a true venue.
Continue reading… “The Driverless Party Bus Is Coming — and This is When Our Kids will Leave Us Behind”