Future-tense when driven to inaction

Powerful lights strobe through branches and reach down to interrogate we commuters on the highway.

Modern loggers cut, strip and stack tree trunks, as if toothpicks, almost in one fell swoop, meaning a hillside thick with radiata on the morning journey to work is a shaggy stumpery by the trek home.

From the road, the redoubtable harvesters - operated by enwombed humanoids girded against the hour by air-conditioning and an amniotic slosh of takeaway coffee - seem autonomous, ominous even.

The hulking plants are reminiscent of the creepy/comforting creations of Simon Stalenhag, the Swedish artist who insinuates baleful/benign futuristic contraptions into the empty fields of his childhood.

If Optimus Prime was peeking over the hay shed of Andrew Wyeth's 1948 American masterpiece, Christina's World, you'd get the general idea.

There is, of course, nothing particularly futuristic, menacing or strange about a glorified steam shovel hacking a swathe through a stand of softwood but this week has something of a future-shock vibe to it and the terraforming up in the forest only reinforces the impression.

If things are off their axis, it's my fault because I back-to-back binged two very different, yet genetically linked, sci-fis on the weekend.

The first was a rewarding repeat viewing of Denis Villeneuve's 2017 film Blade Runner 2049 (there really should be more Nabokov in emotional intelligence testing) and the next was an incredulous slog through Duncan Jones' god-awful 2018 passion project Mute, an unpalatable gumbo of Ridley Scott's original Blade Runner, Peter Weir's Witness, the Farrelly brothers' Kingpin (bowling, silly wigs), Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and - hell, why not? - Bob Fosse's Cabaret.

Bulging with all these influences, it's surprising it wasn't a better movie, or worse.

Those unshakable hours immersed in each speculative universe obviously set me up for an askew re-entry into the real world Monday morning, not advisable given the forever pandemic has already rendered things weird enough as it is.

Then came all that news out of Houston about driverless vehicles.

Crash investigators probed the fiery destruction of a Tesla Model S electric car. The traumatising discovery of two bodies in the burnt-out rear and passenger seats turned all spooky when the driver's seat was found to be empty, as if those poor cops had stumbled upon a rechargeable Mary Celeste.

An antidote to this auto-pilot bad fortune occurred 24 hours and 290 million kilometres later, when NASA flew its Ingenuity helicopter into the Martian air. The drone might've only hovered a few metres above the dirt for less than a minute but the achievement is being hailed as the next giant leap in aviation. Fair enough, too.

But explicated within the context of my futurist frame of mind, the failure of the Tesla vessel and the success of the NASA craft served as a reminder of how we analogue navigators of the 21st century are speeding to the same rest area of oblivion as a dodo bound and gagged in the boot of an Edsel.

For many who don't like the mundanity or the stress or even the posture of driving, this technological inevitability is cause for celebration but for at least one subgroup on the spectrum, it's reason for much dread.

Driverless vehicles will be bad mojo for the planet's control freaks.

We know who we are ... and we're sorry ... but we're not going to change ... unless we're in charge of the whole changing process ... so get out of the way ... again, sorry ... but seriously ... get out of the way.

Without the benefit of psychoanalysis, I'm quite certain my love of driving is linked to my desire for control, which is really just anxiety manifesting itself; the same way I'm compelled to park in exactly the same spot at the shopping centre or pretend to be the pilot whenever I'm in a plane.

It's why I drive a manual, more control. (Oh, and 'cruise control' is anything but; it's surrender on a stalk, a slippery slope to slavery).

Given a spate of quite serious car accidents as a child, it's kind of a miracle I drive at all, let alone really enjoy it.

Five minutes after buckle-up and everything melts away ...

It's not that I can't be a passenger. My wife is an excellent driver and I feel safe when she helms the bridge. And like all sensible husbands, I've learned over the years to curb that endearing tendency to punctuate trips with good-intentioned advice. I do, however, reserve the right to pinpoint precisely when she should dip the high beams before an oncoming vehicle materialises at night. It would be criminal to not share such a gift and I know she appreciates it every single time I exercise this rare talent.

But, as much as the thought of ceding dominion of the family wagon to an algorithm is terrifying, I do realise I'll never have to actually do it myself because we're surely at least a few generations from a time when driverless vehicles are the norm.

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When the age is upon us, however, it'll be sad for those kids who'll progress from the cradle to the robot car without ever being able to blossom in the hothouse of a vehicle under their own command.

Simply, you grow up behind the wheel. It's responsibility and abandon with the guarantee of a Tom Petty song somewhere on the radio in the next three seconds.

I still smile (and sometimes swerve wildly) when a P-plater approaches because I know they're experiencing something special.

Perhaps it's their maiden voyage to Sydney, where they'll find themselves break-neck and shoulder-to-shoulder in the eight lanes of the coat hanger; elated, adrenalised, frightened, albeit still a little annoyed they don't get a better view of the harbour? Maybe they're headed to Melbourne, to negotiate their first crazy hook turn with a tram up their backside? Or perhaps they're going bush and eating up the kilometres on one of our highways of a million dead wombats?

It may seem a bit premature to be waxing nostalgic about the ancient art of driving, but we're already witnessing the incremental abnegation of authority to onboard computers.

How long will it be until the ability to parallel park is bred out of us given the tricky operation is already a hands-free reality?

Then again, maybe a frightening future under the rule of sentient automobile overlords will eliminate parking altogether?

Suddenly, dystopia is looking pretty good.