Technology is supposed to be amazing, almost magical. We have the Internet. We have wireless telephones that can act like tiny computers, we have smart washing machines and autonomous thermostats. And, as many of us are aware, the driver-less car is under development by companies like Google, as well as countless universities nationwide. But leave it up to Congress to screw things up in grand fashion.
Our current Congress is by far one of the least effective in history. With its mix of infighting, arguments, filibusters and grandstanding, they barely have enough time in a day to actually tend to the business of helping to run the US government. Like a really dysfunctional family, Congress members point fingers, make accusations, and resort to taking sides. All they need is Uruguay's Suarez to run around and bite members on the shoulder, and we'd have an all-out brawl.
Yes, these are folks that we voted for.
Carnegie-Melon University had been toiling away on a cool new transportation project to bring the driver-less car to Washington, D.C., in an effort to introduce some technology to the menagerie in capitol hill. Arrangements had been made months in advance, to ensure that the demonstration would be both safe and educational for all involved. There was an air of excitement in the city. Intersections were even reprogrammed to ensure that the project would be presented without a hitch. The car, with all of its sensors, gauges, switches and computers, was primed and ready.
And then a congressman climbed into the car, and in typical congressional style, they managed to kill it.
Within minutes of the start of the presentation, after getting the car up and running, the car's emergency system kicked in, and congress brought the whole project to a slow, quiet halt. A project that was designed and started as a way to help people, dies as soon as congress get's their hands on it.
Hmmm, that sounds familiar.
There are a number of variables in our current Congress that turned the institution into a continuous episode of Jerry Springer. We have politicians from both sides of the aisle as always, but we also have a third group -- the rowdy bunch in the cheap seats, the tea party. Radicals who might as well be donning painted faces and colored wigs because their political actions are not that far from your typical soccer fanatic. They believe that the only way to fix politics is to screw it all up, and they do a damn good job of that.
Leave it to Congress to take something so cool, something so advanced, and ruin it in a moments notice. If they can't even get a driver-less car right, how do expect them to deal with energy and job creation?
... maybe it's time for technology to give us a Congress-less government...