Uber Disruption

There’s a disturbance in the force and technology is behind it.  For instance, do you remember how disturbing it was to rewind your VHS tape?  And even with DVDs, they had to be returned to your favorite rental location or stored with your home entertainment system.  Now we download and stream.  For instance, in the last 15 minutes of my stay at JR’s new place in Arkansas I downloaded four hour-long episodes of television to watch on the plane ride; and let me be clear I was in rural Arkansas.

Then I arrived in Iowa City and walk past the car rental portion of the airport.  Nobody was in line.  Instead, there was a huddle of people waiting near a door, and each person was monitoring their phone waiting for their preferred ride hailing service to arrive and take them to their final destination.

And then JR sends me this article about another way ride hailing firms are likely to disrupt industries.  According to an issue of the Annals of Tourism Research, restaurants and hotels are likely to experience changes from the Uber and Lyft phenomenon.  More eating is likely to take place in cars, putting downward pressure on the need for wait staff in America.  Roadside hotels like the ones JR and I stayed in along Interstate 40 could be threatened as vehicles get converted into traveling sleeping pods.  Researchers then made a logical leap.

Cars in America are often tied to coming of age.  The authors of the study conclude people will have more frequent sex in automobile since they’ll no longer need their hands on ten and two.  In the not too distant future, we may no longer know if the van is a rocking or if the automated driving technology is simply adjusting to the contours of the road.