Entering George Jetson's world

How much would you spend for gizmos that made your life easier?

I recently heard that if you want to spend 70 grand on a new Lexus car that you will never have to worry about parallel parking again because a computer in the car does the parking for you. I saw a demonstration on a morning show a while back, showing the operation of the equipment. Hands are removed from the steering wheel and the car turns perfectly in between two cars, no bumping. It's wild but a sign of the technology future.

(I can save $70,000 by doing that task just fine by myself. All I need to do is go around the block as many times as I need to until there are open spots for me to just swing in to!)

Google has developed cars that drive themselves automatically in traffic. Apparently during the testing, the vehicles are manned during the tests - one person sits in the driver's seat, ready to take control of the vehicle instantly by grabbing the wheel or touch the brake should something go wrong with the system. The person in the passenger's seat is an engineer who monitors the software operations on a computer.

While it would be nice sometimes to just sit and relax and let someone else do the driving (even if I am alone) I would be concerned about the safety issue. Google believes that the technology could nearly half the number of automobile-related deaths because computers are supposedly better at driving than humans in the right circumstances. (Hello! I have had many computer glitches while sitting at my desk...)

I am not sure I would trust the driverless cars but this space-age equipment would come in handy for other tasks that I have to do.

Grocery shopping. Wouldn't it be great to have mechanical arms on the carts to pull in the items programmed into a computer on the cart and if an item not on that list was thrown into the cart it was placed back onto the shelf? I have a problem, especially when I take kids, even grown-up kids, throwing things in that we don't need. Perhaps that new fangled piece of equipment could also pick up those kids and take them back to the van if they try to sneak in an extra box of granola bars or chex mix.

And wouldn't it be great to be able to program the washer into picking up those smelly sweat-stained clothes the second the gym bags are laid down on the kitchen floor. As it stands now, I don't see the clothes until an hour before the clothes are needed and by that time, they have sat in the gym bag for days. "Sorry, mom," has been heard often.

The world is progressing, for sure. Move over George Jetson!