A quiet revolution — and a slower trust.
Not long ago, people went to San Francisco just to ride in a Waymo — a glimpse of the future made possible.
Then one showed up near our campus in Sunnyvale. Uninvited, but still exciting. Something shifted from "thing I heard about" to "thing that exists in my world."
Then one afternoon driving alongside me on the street. No driver. Just the road, and whatever was making the decisions. I pointed it out to my daughter. I wondered if this would feel ordinary to her by the time she grows up.
Then a moment I won't forget — a Waymo in my lane, another in the adjoining lane, and I realized I might be the only human driver in that stretch of road.
A few months pass. Seeing them regularly. The novelty fades, but a quiet curiosity lingers. Then clusters, parked outside the office. Just part of the landscape. Then one morning, parked on my street. My neighborhood.
That's normalization. Not a launch event. Not a press release. Just quiet, incremental presence. And yet, when I see one navigating an intersection, I still notice. I still evaluate. I still hesitate, just slightly.
Normalization and trust are not the same thing.
The visible part is the car. The invisible part is the discipline that made it safe enough to become ordinary. Most of us experience that shift as consumers, noticing it once it's already normal.
Somewhere else, for years, someone invested in the invisible layer that made that moment possible.
That difference is easy to miss.
First published on LinkedIn, March 7, 2026.