People are the weak link in the automobile ecosystem. If we weren’t part of the control loop, things would be safer. A lot safer. It’s estimated that 94 percent of the world’s yearly 1.2 million automotive deaths involve human error. We’re uncorrectable bugs in the system, you and me. We get into accidents once every 500,000 miles, and cause fatalities once every 1.3 million miles. But the software that’s driving autonomous cars? It was performing at levels equal to or better than that error rate three years ago.

It’s all different now. That the Internet has fundamentally changed our lives is a well-worn truism. But if you’re a younger member of society–say, someone born in the 1980s–you probably don’t realize just how big that change has been. We were once islands of interest, alone in our peculiar fascinations. If you liked to sew dresses for dogs, it was easy to feel unique, imagining that no one else had your kind of creativity. Surely, no one else had the foresight to fill a niche for canine haberdashery.