Ten years ago this fall, Google gave us a glimpse of a new device unlike any it had ever built before--a computer-controlled car. It seemed such a strange thing for an Internet company to spend its time and energy on, a "moonshot" as the company's engineers called such massive efforts. But with a single blog post, the search giant promised to reinvent our cars, and our communities, too. It was a big vision for a single invention to carry. And the details were scant. But we quickly filled in the blanks. Software was going to replace our dangerous, congested, sprawling roads with something utterly safe, seamless and organized. Humans would take the back seat in a new network of "ghost roads," as I call them.