Future research
Further social and cultural history research was recommended to be undertaken in the subject area. The commercial aspects of the vehicle industry formed a major discussion at the symposium, specifically planned obsolescence, reiterating the enormity of the industry, its commercial and marketing influence in the development of vehicle design.
A partial social and cultural history of autonomous vehicles
Research investigations into the social and cultural history of AV in literature and films utilised library search engines, online research and published reviews in an English language context, the reviews included peer reviewed articles and books and informal sources of data. The search yielded approximately nineteen sources of films. Twelve films had direct relevance to specific aspects of technology, environment, the city and semiotics.
The social and cultural history has informed the larger body of research through a deeper understanding of the literature that has for centuries provided an aspirational quality and arguably inspired the development of AV. From this research an understanding of the differences between societies expectations of AV and industries accepted Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) levels of vehicle automation emerged. This raised a central research question regarding social and cultural expectations of AV which are revealed in the reviews of film and literature (refer to the Sample of Writing – Chapter 1 of the thesis). This partial history of AV has been structured in the same manner as Adrian Forty’s Objects of Desire: Design Society Since 1750, which is a multi-layered social and cultural history based on themes and a chronology. Forty’s approach has relevance to the multifaceted history of AV. The historical narratives in this history are arranged in three themes which have informed the research questions and the hypothesis:
Myth, magic, science fiction and philosophy in autonomous transport
Synthetically intelligent city, semiotics, civilian and military AV as a ‘technoecology’
Unionism, labour disputes, disruptions, corruption and environmentalism in the vehicle industry
Susan Schneider as editor of Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence through multidisciplinary research with several renowned thinkers provides compelling arguments that link imagination, science fiction, transhumanism and philosophy which informed the progression of the cultural research.
This selective social and cultural history includes discordant notions. A selective history of military interventions though machines and semi-autonomous vehicles reveals a discordant note of unethical use of technology in both military and civilian settings. We are reminded through Bratton’s, ‘The Stack’ (2016: 39) of the geopolitical injustices from technological advancement which are difficult to appreciate due to the scale and underlying computational qualities.
Another discordant theme in this selective history is the field of trauma and accidents. Death by motor vehicle accident is a major sociological phenomenon, as is evidenced in the World Health Organisation’s (2013) Global Status Report on Road Safety: Supporting a Decade of Action 2013. Annual statistics confirm that approximately 1,2 to 1,3 million people die on roads throughout the world. Safety improvements through AV are cited by industry as a compelling argument for the implementation of AV technology to replace human driven vehicles, human error accounting for most of the causation. Associated with the social history is the invention and patents for vehicle indicator and brake lights. This is part of the intricate Convention of Road Signs and Signals, which is part of the semiotic and communications aspect of the project.
Humanities relationship with machinery is an entangled philosophical issue. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the Italian Manifesto (Italian: Manifesto del Futurismo) in 1909, which provides a philosophy for ‘Futurism’ that includes a revelation of speed, machinery, youthfulness, and industry. This work is cited in the social and cultural history as it sets out the complexity which is associated with the field. Marinetti emphasised that literature will not be supplanted by progress; instead, literature will evolve and manifest its progress through instinctive human nature (Marinetti 1909). The centrality of the human reacts against the overwhelming strength of progress and in so doing defines a focal position. Humans will use speed, machinery, and industry, not the opposite (Marinetti 1909, Articles 5 and 6). This is a significant manifesto in the development of the PhD research as establishes a link between philosophy and humanity’s AV.
Historic AV literatures are a rich ground for understanding potential acts of resistance and hypotheticals are extensively employed in philosophical analysis. The social and cultural history is a parallel narrative to the visual taxonomy and event-based political, technical, and linear history. Both histories inform each other and provide a deeper understanding of vehicles, the environment and humanity, assisting in answering research questions and informed the development of the hypothesis.
USA Society of Automotive Engineers, ‘J3016B: Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles’, SAE International, 2021 <https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3016_201806/> [accessed 5 August 2021].
Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750 (Thames and Hudson, 2014) <https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/objects-of-desire-design-and-society-since-1750-softcover> [accessed 3 August 2021].
Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, ed. by Susan Schneider (UK, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2009) <https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Science+Fiction+and+Philosophy%3A+From+Time+Travel+to+Superintelligence-p-9781405149068> [accessed 3 August 2021].p. 14.
Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, Software Studies (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015).
World Health Organization, ‘Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015’, WHO | Regional Office for Africa, 2015 <https://www.afro.who.int/publications/global-status-report-road-safety-2015> [accessed 5 August 2021].Later versions such as The Global status report on road safety 2018, , highlights that the number of annual road traffic deaths has reached 1.35 million
The statistic does not include major injury which is known to be a higher statistic with greater long-term impacts on human health.
United Nations, ‘United Nations Treaty Collection: 20. Convention on Road Signs and Signals’.
Tomaso Fillippo Marinetti, ‘Manifesto of Futurism’, The British Library (The British Library, 1912) <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/manifesto-of-futurism> [accessed 3 August 2021].