"Everyone’s Private Driver"

 

I like Uber.  I’m amazed at the ingenuity of the app and I'm intrigued enough to play my part in the great disruption of urban transportation. But can you imagine a more fatuous tag line than, "Everyone's Private Driver?" 

 

Could any other line be more deeply rooted in an antiquated patrician / plebeian view of the world?  Just who are these moxies that slipped that idea like a trojan horse into the sharing economy?  Isn’t sharing wonderful?  Now we can all have personal drivers, servants and serfs, guilt free – because were doing it under the sanctioning of "sharing" in the technocentric ethos.  

 

It all has such an Alice in Wonderland feel to it -  this curious, self-contradictory,  self congratulatory, ingenious, efficient, spiffy innovation we call the sharing economy. Perhaps it's all part of the fog of San Francisco.  Maybe that's why the Golden Gate Bridge Authority charges a $6 cover charge.  It's our price of admission to the tech kingdom with all it's magical splendor.   No extra charge for a sprinkling of pixie dust on your being?  Cross that bridge and  Voila - We've arrived on time in the twin versions of paradise: Ubertopia and the Lyftosphere.