Brave New Road

Brave New Road Brave New Road Brave New RoadAutonomous cars used to exist only in culture, elend in technology. You could find self-driving cars springing from the imagination of science fiction writers and filmmakers or in the musings of Silicon Valley visionaries. But they were tropes, not technologies. A self-driving car just wasnt the kind of thing one could expect to see on the road in a lifetime.No more. Vehicles that can drive themselves without a menschenfreundlich hand on the wheel or foot on the brake pedal are a technological reality today and soon will be cruising through yur neighborhood, if they arent already there.Indeed, according to one estimate, 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020.For many, this now-inevitable triumph of technology is neither needed nor wanted. People love their cars. They enjoy the freedom a vehicle gives them to commute to work, run personal errands, and escape on family vacations. Car culture is so embedded in ur societyand o ur emotionsthat one in four people name their car and many more talk to them on a daily basis. If you have the physical, mental, and financial strength to drive a car you love, then the driverless future seems like an unnecessary, even frightening, prospect.This delivery droid operated by Just Eat autonomously delivers takeout orders to hungry Londoners.As a futurist, I look at technological, economic, and cultural changes to understand what it will feel like to live a decade or more in the future. That sounds like an abstract and ethereal thing to do for a living, but the future is local and is built every day by the actions of people. Im trained to look for change where it happens firstat the margins, on the fringes, in places where the present state of technology isnt really working out for people the way it ought to. Those are the people and places that need change and see disruptive new technologies not as a burden, but as an opportunity.By thinking about what people on the fri nges could do with that opportunity, you can begin to map out some potentially surprising ways a new technology like self-driving cars could reshape our society.The engineering community is building this future, and is focused on making autonomous vehicles safe and efficient and attractive to use. That is incredibly important. But its also important not to lose track of the social implications of this new technologyand every new technologywhen it reaches the market and comes into wide use.If many people think they arent ready for autonomous vehicles, which have been foreseen for decades, wait until they grapple with the changes they didnt anticipate.REGAINING INDEPENDENT MOBILITYWhen I talk about people on the fringes, that makes it sound like leather-clad youths with spiky green hair. But Im thinking more of people with gray hair I believe the group that will experience the most unexpected impact from self-driving cars is the elderly.For one thing, the Baby Boom generation that is now aging into retirement is used to having things its own way. Their entire lives, popular culture and Madison Avenue have sold Boomers on the idea that they could have it all, and that they had a birthright to the freedom of the open road. Think American Graffiti, Jan and Dean, or Thelma and Louise. Even when the so-called Me Generation starts to lose its eyesight, it will insist on keeping that independence, no matter the cost.AARP, for one, recognizes the size of the potential market. About 36 million current older drivers still hold valid licenses. About 80 percent of them live in car-dependent suburbs or rural areas, not cities with public transit. And nearly 90 percent say they intend to age in place, wrote David Dudley in AARP Magazine in 2015. For those whose independent living is closely tied to their ability to drive safely, self-driving tech is a future that cant come soon enough.By 2030, the number of Americans over 65 is expected to reach 72 million.AARPs interest is i mportant for another reason The elderly vote, and if they want self-driving cars, lawmakers will quickly tackle some of the thorniest policy hurdlessuch as regulation, local traffic laws, and insurance.But an elderly-led adoption of autonomous vehicles will look different from what the technologys biggest backers have been touting. For one thing, the epicenter for the self-driving future would not be Silicon Valley with its tech millionaires and billionaires, or Las Vegas with autonomous tourist minibuses, or Pittsburgh, where Uber is now testing driverless taxis. Instead, the first place to incorporate autonomous vehicles into its mainstream may well be The Villages, a 70,000-resident retirement community in Florida.If so, that would change the type of vehicle to be rolled out. Instead of some sleek sedan, think of a self-driving meerbusen cartThe Villages already has around 100 miles of golf-cart trails, and for residents it is the preferred mode of transportation in the community . From an infrastructure standpoint, kitting out a retirement community with the sensors, lane markers, and other technology needed to have a meaningful fleet of autonomous vehicles is far simpler than doing the same for a city like Boston, with narrow and windy streets that follow precolonial deer trails. Whats more, since they arent intended for the open road, golf carts can be lighter and slower than street-legal cars, and that translates into a dramatically lower barrier to entryand reduced stakes in case of mishap.This delivery droid operated by Just Eat autonomously delivers takeout orders to hungry Londoners.However, the really interesting changes are what happens after people on the fringe adopt the new technology. An elderly population freed from (what is to them) the burden of driving would be given a new lease on independence. Forget about doctors appointments made on time or the absence of stress about faltering reflexes Think about the impact on social activity. Would n ew hobbies develop? Would volunteering or even paid work increase? Perhaps the over-65 platzset would find themselves attending night clubsor maybe afternoon clubs that would bring together a wider variety of retirees in a time in life when company and companionship matters the most.We wont know until the technology reaches them. But I suspect the impact of autonomous vehicles on the lives of elderly people will be profound.REIMAGINING THE SUPPLY CHAINVehicles carry more than peoplethe other passengers are the things in the international supply chain that can stretch from a factory in Vietnam or a farm in Chile to your front door. But increasingly, semitrailer trucks do more than simply carry goods from point A to point B.I learned that lesson while I was in the back of a minivan on the A6 bab racing from Stuttgart and Frankfurt. I didnt want to look at the speedometer as my driver, Anatoly, gunned and revved the minivan from lane to lane like something out of James Bond movie, so i nstead I focused on the seemingly endless stream of long-haul trucks that shared the road with us.In a rare moment of calm as we slowed down for some construction, I asked Anatoly why there were so many trucks on the highway.People dont warehouse anymore, Anatoly replied, taking his eyes o. the road to glance back at me. (Why do I ask my drivers so many questions?) Back a decade ago, all the big companies had warehouses where they stored goods. Then they would deliver them from storage when people placed an order. But today nobody does that. Everything is just-in-time delivery. Most of what is on this road is not peopleits things, its stuff. Stuff is going for a ride on the autobahn.He shook his head as we hit a bump. Its very hard on the roads and bridges.Highways are the new warehouses, but within the limits placed by human labor. After all, a giant warehouse can be staffed by a handful of workers, but each 40-foot container on the back of a tractor-trailer has a human driver.Or t o put it in the frame of a futurist, overland cargo is a fringe use of human-driven vehicles. And self-driving delivery is a disruption that could have all sorts of advantages.In an age of autonomous vehicles, smart cities and roads, intelligent logistics, and artificial intelligence, the human-imposed limit on the number of hours a day a shipment can stay on the road disappears. We can automate, iterate, and designate exactly where we want our stuff and how to get it there. Goods may never have to leave the roador sea lanes or air routesfrom the factory gate to the front porch.Autonomous transport of goods will allow us to completely reimagine the future of the global supply chain, Abe Ashkenazi, the CEO of APICS, a global supply chain trade association, told me recently. We think it could have as much impact as the PC revolution had on business. It wont be just about moving things from point A to point B. The whole system will change. In response, the vehicles will change, too.The necessity of putting a driver in the front with a view of the road has restricted the design of passenger cars and freight-carrying trucks. But autonomous delivery vehicles wont be subject to that constraint. A self-driving vehicle constructed to deliver a weeks groceries or an IKEA sofa wont have to look like the common delivery vanor each other, either.Theres evidence today for what our tomorrow might look like. Just Eat is a company in the United Kingdom that receives takeout orders via an app and sends the food to the customer using a delivery droid. Its essentially an autonomous vehicle, but it doesnt look or act anything like a car. The six-wheeled hauler is more like a large insulated picnic basket, with a hissing on-board air-conditioning unit. The machine is so unassuming that after a few days of rolling along the sidewalks of London, local residents stopped giving it a second thought.RECLAIMING THE INFRASTRUCTURELike the Just Eat droid, future autonomous cargo vehicles no t only will shed their human drivers, but even the form factor of being trucks. Acting as both transport and storage, they will be efficiently designed for the single-minded purpose of getting goods into the hands of consumers as directly as possible.But the roadssu.er the roads. It will be a brave new world for our roads, quite a dystopian future of wear and tear that was never imagined by the engineers who designed them half a century ago. The effect on our infrastructure as the rolling supply chain hammers the road hasnt even begun to be addressed.In another way, though, autonomous vehicles may also help extend the life of the built infrastructure.This truck didnt need a driver for its 120-mile beer delivery in October 2016Back in 2012, I was sitting on a Tempe, Ariz., bus bench with writer and futurist Bruce Sterling, who is best known for championing the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s and the ubiquitous device design trend that followedthat is, the world we are living in now. We had ducked out of the annual Emerge event at Arizona State University and were musing about autonomous cars and staring out across the desert spring landscape.I think the thing that Im really excited to see is what the cars will do at night, Sterling said in his scratchy Texas accent.I spend a lot of time staring out of bed and breakfast room windows at night, I replied. I travel constantly and I love watching cities at night.Sterlings flair for science fiction narrative got excited. You can imagine standing in your hotel room, watching all of the driverless cars moving themselves back into place for the next day. All of them empty. All of them getting ready for the next rush hour.Its like a front-row seat to the midnight ballet, I added, imagining the cars easing down the street, dodging each other with a dancers ease, in no hurry, but beautifully efficient.A midnight ballet may sound a bit strange, but if we dramatically shift the metaphor we use to think about our cars and roa ds, might we not begin to see new patterns and new ways to imagine these vehicles?Its not about cars at all, Shahar Waiser explained to me at a recent event. Waiser is the co-founder of GetTaxi, a ride-sharing service that allows customers to order a taxi via an app or website. What has set GetTaxi apart from its competition in the 70 cities where it operates across Israel, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States is how it works not only with travelers but businesses as well.We are changing how corporations think about moving people and goods, Waiser said. We are optimizing our system to have fewer cars on the road, but with increased utilization. We are trying to not only do business but also make the cities cleaner and less congested. Autonomous vehicles will only increase that.It wont just be cars deadheading home, as Sterling suggested. Delivery runs can be made at night. Self-driving cargo pods can take the most industrial and blighted routes, leaving the parkways and stateli est streets for cars with human passengers. And the roadsides themselves will be transformed, as preprogramed cars wont be swayed by flashing neon or large signs proclaiming deep, deep discounts.That sort of perspective shift has happened to other landscapes. Rivers and waterfronts were the industrial highways of previous centuries, but now we see them as pastoral. Perhaps, as we drive on them less, we will be more inclined to see our roads and city streets as works of architecture or public art.To the extent that self-driving cars will be perfect-driving cars, we may reclaim the streets for strolling on or playing hopscotch.The cultural effects of technological change are often the most surprising. Its not good or bad, it is just whats been happening as long as we have been humans.And so, the most interesting changes that will be brought by autonomous cars will be the cultural shifts. What will happen when we have an entire generation of children who have never known a time when ca rs did not drive themselves. What will their children think and their childrens children?Whole infrastructures that we take for granted today as critical will recede into the distance. Try explaining to a seven-year-old that at one point the entire worlds overland transportation was powered by horses. There will be a time when stop lights and road signs recede away like so many stables and barns.The future of autonomous cars will certainly change our lives in both dramatic and subtle ways, but the ways that will be most interesting are the things that are forgotten, the things that the next generation deem useless and frivolous. Its exactly the shedding of this baggage that will allow the next generation and their children to be unencumbered by the past.As I said at the beginning, its important for the engineering community to think through the scenarios of how new technology can affect the course of society. Engineers are the ones building this future, and the technology choices th ey make will determine the other choices the rest of us can make when using the technology. Its not enough to perfect the technology. Engineers have to be mindful of the way their technology impacts an all too imperfect world. MEBrian David Johnson is futurist in residence at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University in Tempe and a futurist and fellow at the consultancy Frost Sullivan.