By Rhys Davies, product manager for robotics, Snapcraft and Ubuntu Appliances at Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu
The year was 1923. Forty-two thousand people in Cincinnati signed a petition to force all cars in the city to have governing devices that would shut off the engine at 25 miles per hour.
The proposal was defeated in an election referendum, but it illustrates the anxiety and suspicion that the automobile ran into around the world soon after its introduction. Some people just thought horses were better and safer.
History is littered with examples of initial skepticism around radically new technologies. When the operatorless elevator was invented in the late 19th century, many people were terrified. People in the 1930s worried telephones would electrocute them. [Read more…] about Opinion: Robots are proving themselves now more than ever