Last week, the billionaire financier Dermot Desmond made the case for abandoning MetroLink, arguing that autonomously-driven vehicles (AVs) will make it redundant. Saying AVs would dramatically cut private car ownership in the decades ahead, he suggested the metro would be “useless, out of date in 10 or 15 years’ time”.
But have we ever really considered what the future of transportation will look like, given recent advancements in vehicles and technology?
Twentieth and 21st century humans are arguably conditioned to welcome technological progress even when its purposes are not obviously to the benefit of society. After all, we are the generation that has been gifted the internet, the smartphone and now artificial intelligence. We are the Axiom Humans in the film Wall-E who float around in hoverchairs, completely oblivious to our surroundings. Who are we, mere end users and consumers, to question the techno-gods?
But every technology has a story. None of it was discovered by accident in a lab. Technologies by definition are designed interferences (both good and bad) in the natural and social order. They are the product of human imagination and desires, and also corporate agendas.
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For example, most of the social media platforms these days are really sophisticated data collection companies whose main customers are advertisers, not end users. The US author Shoshana Zuboff describes this as “surveillance capitalism”. It is a far cry from the emancipatory potential once dreamed of by early 20th century philosophers like Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, whereby technology would be used to challenge power structures and democratise culture.
Science fiction writers often excel at explaining the present tense back to us. They often showcase technological innovation as a way of making a deeper point about social control or the death of nature. For writers such as Philip K Dick or Kim Stanley Robinson, technology serves as a backdrop for themes about reality, social organisation and what it means to be human.
Philip K Dick, whose stories were made into films such as Blade Runner, Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau, uses hovercars, “mag-lev” autonomous vehicles and flying cars to create a sense of a future that is both advanced and dilapidated. In Dick’s stories, even the most advanced technology is still just a mundane necessity in a polluted, crowded and inhospitable world. In contrast, Robinson is more optimistic that technology can be moulded and shaped by humans to serve democratic ends. The “skyhooks” and spacecraft in his Mars trilogy showcase human ingenuity and co-operation as the colonists struggle to terraform a barren planet.
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We are not that far off from flying cars these days, if drones count. But it is likely to take decades before AVs can operate reliably in mixed urban traffic, bad weather conditions, and where wireless access is unreliable, all of which will require huge investment. Will the taxpayer be expected to foot the bill to prepare our road infrastructure for AVs?
AVs are being designed to “prescribe” a new way of life for its users and the public at large. The “script” promises a future of reduced traffic, increased safety, and newfound leisure time for “drivers” who can now work, relax or sleep during their commute. However, don’t be surprised when the proprietors of the technology start arguing for dedicated traffic lanes, subsidies and tax breaks because this technology will be very expensive.
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It also involves a darker side, reminiscent of the dystopian worlds in science fiction. The AV could also become a constantly monitoring entity, collecting data on its passengers and surroundings. Surveillance and advertising are based, after all, on pretty much the same information infrastructures.
One of the great lessons of science fiction is that no matter what the technological horizons seem to promise, we still have the same basic challenge of figuring out how to live together. We live on this unique, fragile planet, with its limited resources and planetary boundaries. As long as AVs require vast quantities of non-renewable, finite resources, land and energy, and if they command road space as inefficiently as private vehicles, we won’t be much better off than we are today. A truly sustainable future for transport is one that privileges shared, public and active mobility over private cars whether they are AV or not.
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Technology can be part of a socio-ecological transition, but it all depends on what problems we expect it to solve. And the most important one is whether we want to share resources or compete for them in a climate-changing world.
Sadhbh Ó’ Neill is a climate and environmental researcher
