The inevitable future of self-driving carsPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Hello and welcome backIssue #251: wildfires, knives, and lesser-known reading recsLate last year, I was visiting one of my favorite places on Earth: Dolores Park in San Francisco at golden hour. It was starting to get cold and the sky was turning purple, which meant Id need a ride home. You have to take a Waymo, one of my friends said, referring to a brand of self-driving car. You cant visit SF without doing that at least once.Five minutes later, a signature white Jaguar pulled up and drove right past me. The same thing happened to Chris Yanda on Medium, who chased his Waymo around a corner when it got confused. Mine stopped 10 feet away, down a hill. I got in, listened to the prerecorded instructions (fasten my seatbelt, dont touch the steering wheel, stay calm) and we were off.It felt like a very slow version of the tilt-a-whirl at Dorney Park but I arrived safely at my destination. (There was a kerfuffle right after I got out, when the Jaguar backed up to turn around, almost hitting me, but besides that it was uneventful.)At the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, the largest exhibitions featured self-driving cars. Manufacturers like Waymo (the leader in this space, owned by Googles parent company, Alphabet) and upstart competitors like Zoox (owned by Amazon) were gearing up for what theyre hoping is an inflection point in self-driving technology. Since last spring, anyone has been able to hail robotaxis in San Francisco. Theyre already ferrying passengers around LA, Phoenix, Miami, and Austin. This year, theyll do the same in Tokyo. The rollout has been bumpy a car drove one person in endless circles, some honk at each other all night, and the safety implications are still unclear but, personally, when I was sitting in that car the main thing I felt was inevitability.Vincent Vanhoucke, an engineer at Waymo, writes: Within the first couple of rides, as the novelty inevitably fades, youre left with a deep sense that this is how personal transport ought to be. I didnt reach that point, but if youve ever been in a self-driving car did you?As with any new technology, whats most interesting arent the first-order effects but the unintended second- and third-order ones. Also on Medium, Nicholas Moryl peers into the future, imagining cars that may get radically smaller when they no longer need steering wheels or brakes. And maybe, 100 years from now, humans driving cars will be like humans riding horses: rare, expensive, and mostly done for fun in dedicated spaces. Harris Sockel Also today17 years ago, one writer and her family lost their home in San Diegos Witch Creek Fire. On Medium, in one of the most moving and insightful stories about home loss Ive ever read, she explains: Being part of a mass wildfire draws in a lot of opinions on your grief You feel the need to caveat that you know a home is just stuff and a life is not replaceable, but it really isnt just stuff. It is the story of your life.Poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert who just released a new book has shared exhaustive reading lists on Medium every year for the last decade. This years list features under-the-radar titles like Manuel Puigs Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages (1982), a novel written almost entirely in dialogue, and Mollie Panter-Downes One Fine Day (1947) which is literally just the story of one uneventful day. I love the honesty in these reviews. Gabbert isnt trying to sell you anything, and shes one of the most adventurous readers I know.Dont buy a knife set. Just buy one great chefs knife. Mark Laflamme, who wasted $2,000 in his quest for cutlery perfection, recommends the Victorinox 9-inch Fibrox Pro Chefs Knife. Its $60. Your daily dose of practical wisdomCynicism is easy. Building is hard, but worth it. (JA Westenberg)