{"id":5058,"date":"2019-03-19T21:10:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T01:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/?p=5058"},"modified":"2019-03-19T21:14:02","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T01:14:02","slug":"event-attendance-designing-the-connected-city-cooper-hewitt-smithsonian-design-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2019\/03\/19\/event-attendance-designing-the-connected-city-cooper-hewitt-smithsonian-design-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Event Attendance: Designing the\u00a0Connected\u00a0City @ Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
By: Michelle Kung<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
INFO 601-02 Assignment 3 Event Attendance<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Cities like\nNew York are notorious for congestion and pollution. It often takes the same\namount of time to walk somewhere as it does to drive somewhere. But big tech\ncompanies are reimagining urban mobility with connected and autonomous vehicles\n(AVs). On the 25th<\/sup> of February, 2019, leaders in the field of\nautonomous vehicles or driverless cars came together at the Cooper Hewitt,\nSmithsonian Design Museum for a panel discussion. Moderated by Cynthia E Smith, the curator of Socially Responsible Design<\/a>, the panel consisted of Sarah Williams,\nthe director of Civic Data Design Lab at MIT<\/a>, Ryan Powell, the head of user research\nand UX design at Waymo<\/a> (Google\u2019s\nself-driving car project), and Jack Robbins, the director of urban design at FXCollaborative<\/a>. With diverse backgrounds, the three\npanellists debated topical issues engendered by AVs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A World Unknown<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
One thing that\nthe three panellists agreed on was that no one really knows how technology will\nimpact mobility in urban spaces. The field is still new and concepts have only\nbeen tested on limited scales. Jack Robbins called this \u2018a new era of\nmobility\u2019. Indeed, we have no idea how the way we move, not just within cities\nbut across the country, is going to change. All we know, and all leaders in the\nfield know, is that autonomous vehicles will be the biggest drivers of change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heaven or Hell Scenario<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Jack Robbins\nillustrated two opposing scenarios: a heaven scenario and a hell scenario. In\nthe heaven scenario, after autonomous vehicles have replaced standard vehicles.\nThere will be fewer vehicles on the road, fewer vehicle miles travelled and\nmore spaces freed up in cities for other things. Without the need for parking\n(i.e. temporary storage of private vehicles) within the city, there is a\ntremendous opportunity for the creation of more green spaces and open spaces\nwhich will increase the liveability of any congested and densely populated\ncity. On the other hand, in the hell scenario, there will be more vehicles and\nmore vehicle miles travelled. Autonomous vehicles will be on the road driving\naround with or without passengers, which would be terrible for inhabitants of\ncities as well as the health of the planet. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Will companies deliver on their promises?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Companies\ndeveloping autonomous vehicles are of course promising everything detailed in\nthe heaven scenario. But Jack Robbins cautioned event goers against trusting\nthese companies too much.  After all, the\nway they make their money is incompatible with the promises they are making.\nFor example, Google sells advertising but is promising increased road safety,\nmobility equity, easy parking, transit support, and less traffic. But how? By\ngathering an increasing variety of information on humans and on built\nenvironments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Human Behaviour is\nInformation as Thing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Waymo,\nGoogle\u2019s driverless car company, purports to take a human centred approach to\ncreate a ride hailing service. Their primary goal is physical safety. In order\nto achieve this, Waymo collects an incredible amount of data on people and\nhuman behaviour in order to program the world\u2019s most experienced drivers.\nAccording to Ryan Powell, 94% of road accidents are caused by human errors and\nWaymo\u2019s aim is to eliminate this altogether. Waymo has managed to collect the\ndata of behaviour patterns of adults, children, and cyclists in order to teach\ntheir fleet of driverless cars how to react safely in each scenario. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the\nsurface, treating human behaviour as information as thing is not at all\nrevolutionary. Psychology, anthropology, and a whole host of other social\nsciences have studied the behaviour of humans for decades. But the monetisation\nand capitalisation of this information on such a large scale is new. Speakers\nin this talk were more interested in talking about the information regarding\nthe space and infrastructure of a city than information about the people living\nin them, which is slightly alarming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public Space as Private\ninformation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A huge topic of debate in this design talk was the importance of\nthe public nature of public space. Speakers Sarah Williams and Jack Robbins\nboth challenged Ryan Powell on Waymo\u2019s current practices of keeping information\nabout the public space private. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Waymo gathers more and more information on public spaces, their\ndata set becomes more valuable. Sarah Williams advocated for city governments\nto leverage their power to ban companies like Waymo from operating in their\ncities to negotiate data rights. Both Sarah Williams and Jack Robbins argued\nfor the importance of public governing bodies to step up and play a more active\nrole in this sphere rather than passively hoping for technology companies to do\nthe right thing by citizens. Autonomous vehicles pose real dangers in deepening\nand widening the digital divide, privatising public data, and decreasing\nequitability in cities. It is up to cities to set boundaries, guidelines, and\nregulations so that data collection and ownership of cities contribute to the\npublic good and can benefit the many rather than the few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion and Reflection<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This design talk was fascinating and helped me conceptualise the\nnew forms of information this emergent technology creates. The panel discussion\nreally encouraged me to think more deeply about the data rights of citizens and\ncity governments. It is already inconceivable, the amount of data big software\ncompanies have on our digital behaviour. It is entirely unimaginable, for the\naverage user, what information companies developing autonomous vehicles will\nhave on our behaviour in physical environments once AVs become more mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meantime, it is clear that city governments need to catch\nup to big tech players in order to ensure that public spaces are protected, new\ninfrastructure built is adaptable to unforeseeable changes, that cities become\nmore liveable in the long term for all its inhabitants, not just a select few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
References<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Buckland, Michael K. “Information as Thing.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science<\/em>42, no. 5 (1991): 351-60. doi:10.1002\/(sici)1097-4571(199106)42:53.0.co;2-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Michelle Kung INFO 601-02 Assignment 3 Event Attendance Cities like New York are notorious for congestion and pollution. It often takes the same amount of time to walk somewhere as it does to drive somewhere. But big tech companies are reimagining urban mobility with connected and autonomous vehicles (AVs). On the 25th of February, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":5059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243,3,1],"tags":[365,367,366],"class_list":["post-5058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bowler","category-event-reviews","category-uncategorized","tag-autonomous-vehicles","tag-mobility","tag-smart-city"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/03\/Waymo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5058"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5067,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058\/revisions\/5067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}