ONE PERSON BOYCOTTS

No, I haven't ridden in a Waymo yet. The driverless cars can be seen all over the streets of San Francisco and our visitors always ask if we have taken one. At first, the sight of a driverless cars was unnerving, but we human can adapt easily, so they no longer bother me. Why I haven't ridden in one is more quixotic: I want to support the people who make their living driving taxis or in Lyft (though not Uber, which is another on my list of personal boycotts because of their donations to a political party I don't agree with). Waymo and Zoot, owned by Google and Amazon respectively, are the inevitable conquerors of our streets. Before they reach supremacy, I won't take one of their cars until they commit to retraining the drivers who make a living driving taxis or ride-hailing cars. The ride-hailing cars made a big dent in the taxi drivers' living, but now many taxi drivers do both. 

I think of Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia and the effect AI will have on that site. Will people stop using Wiki as they have with MySpace or Yahoo? I suppose if I had been alive in the late 19th-early 20th century, I would have boycotted the newfangled motor cars too. I have a quixotic bent in me and take on one-person crusades that inevitably will result in my failure to make any difference in changing people's ways.

Recently I watched a Korean drama called Arthdal Chronicles, a fantasy series set in the Bronze Age. I do not recommend it. It's a slog through 20 slow-moving episodes, but it has an interesting premise. The film tells the story of how one group of people developed sophicated uses for iron that changed the direction of the human race. According to the film, where previously, people lived in small villages, helped each other, and suffered together through natural disasters and battles with other villages, with the making of iron tools, including weapons, some villages were able to consistently conquer others and turned the defeated into slaves. Living in larger groups in towns became more important because of the possibilities of trade. Wealth became more important. In towns, not everyone knew each other. People with wealth became more important than others. You can see where this tale is going, first by somewhat idealizing village life, and then showing the effects of change on large groups.

As human beings, we are essentially curious and seeking, leaving behind outdated ways for new ones that may or may not be beneficial for everyone. Makes me wonder what we would be like today if people from long ago hadn't made those decisions about changing. As Charles Darwin once said, "It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change."

I would rather go by Robert Frost's words in his poem, The Road Not Taken:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Check out this list of defunct social media sites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_networking_services