Why Taxis Need Uber...

The so-called "gig economy" is picking up steam... freelancers replacing full-time staff, companies focus on profits and shareholder value rather than hiring new permanent employees. With this type of work arrangement, geographically diffuse and independent workers are paid piecemeal for completing tasks -- facilitated by the connections from internet-based apps.

Amazon of course has Mechanical Turk, the original "piece work over the internet" freelancers platform. Another Amazon effort riffs on Uber: package delivery. Mechanical Turk is a platform where workers complete microtasks (such as transcribing, proofreading or answering surveys) for, many times, cents on the dollar. These internet denizens work on their own time and can pick up gigs on-demand.

But with the competition to taxis, Uber is really reshaping how the freelance economy works. People forget, in the U.S., most taxi companies retain drivers as 'contractors,' and require the drivers to pay for fuel, maintenance, etc. Regulation has come about to make a partially-public service (shared rides) more consumer-friendly (taxi meters, inspections, licensing). Tim O'Reilly says,

Regulation is not a good in itself. It is a means of achieving public goods. And so far, it is pretty clear that Uber and Lyft (and in particular, the competition between them) are improving the transportation options in American cities. Regulators should be using the opportunity to revisit the old way of doing things rather than trying to make the new conform to outdated rules that no longer serve their purpose...

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Will Über and Others Make Autonomous Cars Ubiquitous?

Of course they will! That headline is sort of silly -- as we read over at BuzzFeed, "There’s a lot of skepticism about self-driving cars. About how successful they’ll be, about whether people will really want to use them, about whether they’re safe. But this is what you should know about autonomous vehicles: They are coming. Inevitably. Inexorably. Coming."

Further on...

The first time I rode in a fully autonomous car, what really impressed me was when the car saw something that I could not. As I rode down a residential street in Mountain View, the car slowed, for no apparent reason. Yet in the front seat, a laptop showed everything the car could “see.” And up ahead, there was a man, in the street, standing behind a double-parked vehicle. He was concealed from my eyes, but the car detected him. And it slowed down, anticipating that he might step out unexpectedly.

We read at Forbes that Google’s $258M investment in Uber shows it is serious about commercializing the Google Car. Even without car sharing, driverless cars will deliver tremendous social and economic benefits. Every year, more than 1.3 million people die in car accidents worldwide, and more than 50 million are seriously injured. In the US alone, more than 34 thousand die and 2.2 million are injured in over 5 million accidents. 90% of these accidents are caused by human error. Google has declared its intention to reduce accidents by 90% using driverless vehicle technology. Volvo is on a mission to eliminate all deaths and injuries in its cars by 2020.