To watch these inanimate objects putter about is, in many ways, to experience the future in all its messy contradictions. The Waymo-parking-lot disruption epitomizes the unintended consequences of a still-new technology and a complex system when it interacts with the physical world \u2014 in this case, an alert feature for the roads was deployed with no concept of how it might trigger a honk tsunami when the cars gathered at their depots. The long-promised self-driving future is here, and it is equal parts wondrous and mundane. That the cars drive themselves is a small miracle; that they drive endlessly through the night in halting circles in parking lots is the stuff of satire.\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n