An Autonomous Polish Prime Minister and an Autonomous Polish President Ride in an Autonomous Car – Autonomous Rubens, DALL E, 2022

Waldemar Malicki, a Polish pianist (living) and the host of an excellent music programme every Saturday on Polish Radio 2, developed the idea of the autonomous car in his customarily interesting way. He did so while reflecting on pianists who play boogie-woogie with perfect rhythm and dynamics. Malicki predicts that an improved digital player piano 2.0 will soon replace such pianists, and perhaps even those who play Chopin lyrically and Debussy chromatically. 

Malicki is right: why should the limit of our imagination in the twenty-first century always be the ‘autonomous car’? Why not the ‘autonomous artist’? 

Such bold visions of the technological future should nevertheless have limits. 

Try to imagine a completely ‘autonomous prime minister’ or president in a medium-sized country—thirty-odd million inhabitants, say, in a temperate climate. Horrendum.