Thanks! Was it the book or the idea that made you give up reading it

It was the breathless, uninformed cheerleading for the death of privacy. It was the utter certainty that Google Glass was as disruptive a technology as personal computers and if the authors couldn't explain why, it wasn't a failing of their assertion it was just something you'd have to take their word for. It was the slavish adulation for tech for tech's sake, rather than for its ability to solve problems. It starts with a foreword in which an author derides a hotel for not having theater tickets, dinner reservations and a cup of cocoa waiting for him even though he tweeted the hotel's name, his desire for theater tickets, dinner reservations and a cup of cocoa from his plane. It's just a tedious book by tedious people who turned an important subject into utter tedium. Worse, rather than give a broad overview of the subject with positives and negatives, the authors served as moutpieces for anyone who would sit down for an interview with them. It's a sloppy and pointless book.

What I'm more interested in (and more capable of actually saying something meaningful) are the grave implications such a technology can have on our car-dependant societies.

Exactly my point, and exactly what I was trying to convey. Apologies if that wasn't clear. My point about the legal issues is that they're going to be a cast-iron bitch to settle in a fair and beneficial way, which means there are going to be a million different ways the cookie can crumble.

I think the world would benefit from an exploration of the implications of a transportation system where key components are locked behind a paywall on a server remote from the vehicle or owner. That's something new under the sun. I don't think you need to be a legal scholar to dig into it - I think you need to be able to look at the impact of a couple different outcomes from a couple different controversial points and then draw some historical parallels in order to get attention. Consider how the destruction of railroads affected the economy of small towns in the United States, or the rise of the Interstate freeway system. The rest of your hypotheticals are totally en pointe.

Maybe I should go for a PhD so I can be the first expert in this new area. You never know.

Someone with a Ph. D in, say, "Transportation Information Systems" will be able to write their own paychecks in the next 20 years. Bank on it.