It is the little things,

Last week a truck driver came in to pick up a shipment. Mostly we are just a small parcel shipper. UPS, FedEx and the postal service, but sometimes we have big, bulky freight, something that needs a truck. 

It was a driver who had been here before. We knew him, not by name, but by appearance and company. He was older, and seemed adept at driving a truck, which is not easy at our place. His white hair was always combed, neatly and always the same, it never seemed to change color, length, or style. His blue jeans were always blue, never the faded milky grey of age and repeated laundering. 

In some ways you develop a friendship with people whose lives occasionally and repeatedly intersect yours. He was always pleasant, efficient. He would joke, and talk about his plans for the evening, he liked to cook things on the grill. He really liked steak. He used to ride a small motorcycle, but gave it up after he got married.

"I had to go to a meeting this morning." He said, his accent was southern, but it was washed out by years of living in the north.

"It was to teach us about the new technology. There going to put a camera in the cab of my truck." 

"Watching you?" I asked. 

"Yeah. I been driving forty one years, I was going to go 4 more and retire, make it to 45 you know. I'm going to do it now." His voice was even, but the words came quickly, allegro information with a disillusioned beat. 

It was a move designed to lower insurance rates, and increase safety. They told him they would never even look at the footage unless there was an accident, and then only the few minutes preceding the collision. He scoffed. To him it was the purest form of Big Brother intrusion, and he wanted no part of it. 

I worry about self driving trucks. Are they safe? Can the programmers possibly predict every circumstance. And what about all the people who make their living driving trucks? What will they do? A whole industry displaced by automatons. It has troubling implications.

On a drastically smaller scale technology is already taking a toll. Here is a man whose life has been changed by the intrusion of machinery. It bothered him, it scared him, and his only method of retaliation was to cut short his plans, retreat, let the machines win. In some ways that bothers me.

I really wish I would have learned his name.