A look at the development of self-driving cars and the possibilities for disruptive but ultimately beneficial changes that society will likely experience as we switch over from human-driven, gas-guzzling, privately owned vehicles to autonomous electric ones that people hire only when they need them.

It's an interesting topic, and I agree with author Lawrence Burns that it's one that's likely to have a huge effect on all our futures. (One that can't come soon enough, if you ask me, because I really hate driving.) But my interest levels in the book itself were a bit variable. It doesn't start off very promisingly, I'm afraid, with a long section covering the DARPA races of the mid-2000s that I found surprisingly unsatisfying, as it glossed over a lot of the technical details I was interested in without being terribly successful at turning it into an exciting human-interest story instead.

Fortunately, much of the rest of it worked better for me, although it never did get as much into the technical side of things as I was hoping. For me, the software engineering is one of the most interesting aspects of this subject. But, although I did find the chapter devoted to the testing of Google's automated vehicles one the most engaging parts of the book, it really only scratched the surface of the technical challenges involved.

That may not be too surprising, though, as Burns is a businessman, not a technical guy, although his career, unusually, has encompassed both Detroit and Silicon Valley and has perhaps even involved a sort of synthesis of the two. So he includes a lot of detail about the business side of things and the personalities involved and how different companies have taken different approaches. Sometimes a little more than I quite wanted, to be honest, and his position probably isn't entirely unbiased. But he's very, very knowledgeable about all of this, and he has a very clear vision of the future that I think is both realistic and worthwhile.

So, even if this isn't entirely the book I was hoping it would be, I'd say it is definitely worth reading if this is a subject you're interested in. ( )