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| | | -- By EmiL - 07 Nov 2016 | |
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< | In the months since first hearing Jerimiah Foster’s presentation on FOSS and the automotive future, I have spent several months thinking and reading about the question, “how should transport be organized in a networked society so as to preserve rights that people have, whether they are ‘drivers’ or ‘passengers’? This question has led to three threads of thought: (1) the precise contours of what that environment ought to look like (2) my participation in the networked vehicular society, and (3) the tools I have to opt out if I so choose. The first proposition is most divorced from my present reality or ability to actually impact, so naturally that is where the lion’s share of my modest progress has taken place. Accordingly, the majority of this essay will be devoted to outlining the essential actors and principles relevant to answering the question how to live and drive privately in the changing automotive world. | >
> | In the months since first hearing Jerimiah Foster’s presentation on FOSS and the automotive future, I have spent several months thinking and reading about the question, “how should transport be organized in a networked society so as to preserve rights that people have, whether they are ‘drivers’ or ‘passengers’?” This question has led to three threads of thought: (1) the precise contours of what that environment ought to look like (2) my participation in the networked vehicular society, and (3) the tools I have to opt out if I so choose. The focus of this essay will be largely devoted to the first question of how to live and drive privately in the changing automotive world, particularly as it pertains to the emergence of autonomous cars. | | | A New Language | |
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< | In an ideal world the development of a new lexicon would be an important first step to delineating people’s rights in a society with networked and autonomous vehicles. For example, the distinction between people as “drivers” versus “passengers” and modes of transport as “public” versus “private” are becoming increasingly estranged from the meanings they had in the mid-twentieth century. If Tesla, Google, and the dozens of others competing in the automated car market have their way, everyone will soon be a passenger. Thus, creating a new language to describe human interactions with vehicles as they become increasingly autonomous would help remind people that the romantic notion of the car as freedom, autonomy and fulfillment of an American ideal— which was at least partially tethered to reality— no longer exists. A conversation about workers and landowners yields a very different product than a debate about slaves and masters. | >
> | In an ideal world the development of a new lexicon would be an important first step to delineating people’s rights in a society with networked and autonomous vehicles. For example, the distinction between people as “drivers” versus “passengers” and modes of transport as “public” versus “private” are becoming increasingly estranged from the meanings they had in the mid-twentieth century. If Tesla, Google, and the dozens of others competing in the automated car market have their way, everyone will soon be a passenger. Thus, creating a new language to describe human interactions with vehicles as they become increasingly autonomous would help remind people that the romantic notion of the car as freedom, autonomy and fulfillment of an American ideal; which was at least partially tethered to reality; no longer exists. After all conversation about workers and landowners yields a very different product than a debate about slaves and masters. | | | Alas, I lack the creativity to even propose what the such a new vocabulary would contain—I only know that words will make no effort to propose the necessary new vocabulary, and I will instead adapt the use the labels of “driver,” “passenger,” “owner,” and “guest” as best as possible. | |
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> | Concerns of Drivers
Concerns of Passengers
As alluded to before, I believe the ultimate objective of manufacturers and service providers in the future will be to convert everyone into a passenger in either a car they have themselves purchased or that belonging to a service. So whether it is an individually-owned car driven for noncommercial purposes or a vehicle owned by some future version of Uber, the driver has become the computer. And in both instances the concerns of the passenger remain the same—how do I retain control over access and accuracy of the information that I am emitting as I am transported from point A to point B. | | | Here, There, and Inbetween | | | This perspective, however, becomes problematic for two reasons. First because it suggests that ownership is dependent on the nature of the data rather than the existence of an independent right for a driver to control his behavior data by virtue of the fact that he generated it. There is no way to draw a clear line between “critical” information that warrants direct consumer control and what secondary information manufacturers can keep for themselves. Ideally, there would be no need for a line and everyone would have complete control over device-generated data, but if smart phones are any indication of how autonomous cars will be treated, that simply won’t be the case. Extending the ‘safety-first’ approach beyond issues of ownership, it also opens the door to justifying extreme government intervention. Under the banner of safety first, you could imagine a world where the police could override driver controls in a high-speed chase or a routine traffic stop. Or perhaps law enforcement could pay to buy-in like other advertisers to have your car take you on certain routes to make surveillance a little easier. In short, using safety as the ultimate end-goal of autonomous cars will likely lead mean the end of autonomous drivers and as new technology develops, regulation must continue to be anchored in principles of individual rather than collective rights. | |
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Wouldn't we need to begin by asking what a "driver" is? When you use other modes of public transport, you don't expect autonomy. The idea that a "car" is a form of transport that involves exercising rights, unlike a bus or a train and more like a bicycle or a skateboard, isn't somehow inscribed in the order of the universe. If transportation is a service, how does modality change the rights of the service's recipient? | | | | |
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< | I think you want to work further away from Jeremiah, and further away from GPL as well. The questions you want to ask, and which the next draft can more tightly focus on, have to do with much more general propositions. How should transport be organized in a networked society so as to preserve rights that people have, whether they are "drivers" or "passengers"?
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