Autonorama: uma história sobre carros “inteligentes”, ilusões tecnológicas e outras trapaças da indústria automotiva

by Peter Norton, Fábio Fernandes (Translator)

“As bases foram lançadas para a autonomia total”, anunciou Elon Musk em 2016, quando garantiu ao mundo que a Tesla teria uma frota sem condutor nas estradas em 2017. “É duas vezes mais seguro que um ser humano, talvez melhor”. As promessas de utopias de condução tecnofuturísticas têm sido omnipresentes onde quer que as empresas tecnológicas e os fabricantes de automóveis se encontrem.

No livro Autonorama: uma história sobre carros “inteligentes”, ilusões tecnológicas e outras trapaças da indústria automotiva, o historiador Peter Norton argumenta que os carros sem condutor não podem ser as “soluções de mobilidade” seguras, sustentáveis, nem inclusivas – como as empresas de tecnologia e os fabricantes de automóveis nos prometem. O marketing de um futuro sem motorista está nos distraindo de investir em melhores maneiras de nos locomovermos e que podemos implementar agora. Ao contrário dos veículos autónomos, estas alternativas são baratas, seguras, sustentáveis e inclusivas.

Norton leva o leitor a um passeio envolvente – desde a exposição da GM Futurama até rodovias e veículos “inteligentes” – para mostrar como estamos mais uma vez sendo vendidos à dependência do carro sob o disfarce de mobilidade. Ele argumenta que não podemos ver o que as empresas tecnológicas estão nos vendendo, exceto à luz da história. Com os carros sem motorista, prometemos que a nova tecnologia resolverá os problemas que a dependência do carro nos causou, incluindo os congestionamentos, colisões, atropelamentos e emissões de poluentes. Mas estas são as mesmas promessas que nos mantiveram numa rotina de dependência do automóvel durante 80 anos.

A obra traz uma lufada de esperança, defendendo uma mobilidade sábia, comprovada e humana na qual podemos investir agora, sem esperar por uma tecnologia que está para sempre fora de alcance. Antes que sistemas, dados e tecnologia inteligentes possam nos servir, sugere Norton, precisamos de sabedoria. Rachel Carson alertou-nos que quando procuramos soluções tecnológicas em vez do equilíbrio ecológico, podemos piorar os nossos problemas. Com esta sabedoria, afirma Norton, podemos satisfazer as nossas necessidades de mobilidade com o que temos neste momento.

Genres: Urbanism, Urban Planning, Nonfiction, Technology, History, Environment

400 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

About the author

Fuller name: Peter D. Norton

Reviews

[Shrike58 · Rating 3 out of 5]

What one has here is an unabashed polemic, showing how the current supposed automotive great leap forward is only the latest in a line of supposed technological utopias that proclaim a new era of safe and efficient driving, but which turn out to be highly overrated. I personally know that I've been highly skeptical of the current claims that truly "smart" cars are just over the horizon, particularly when it'll just be an excuse to take the steering wheel out of the hands of drivers (I personally enjoy driving, thank you); not to mention representing a golden opportunity for the automotive industry to gouge "subscription" fees out of car buyers for electronic features. In any case Norton has done the general public a service by calling attention to an old party trick of the car industry.

A little less good is Norton's take on urban congestion and cars, and yeah, there's no denying that we've reached peak automotive congestion in our cities and peak sprawl; both conditions being unsustainable. What I don't see is any admission in this book regarding the political and social attitudes that led to this state of affairs, as affluent White America turned its back on urban living. Also, I did enjoy bike riding as an avocation before my knees basically gave out, and the reality is that, speaking of the Greater Washington Area, the weather is too unpleasant most of the time to justify commuting by bike to work; unless you're young, fit and your boss doesn't mind you looking like a slob all day. Norton really likes bicycles and really likes the Netherlands; it'll be some time before a significant chunk of the United States looks like the Netherlands.

None of the above negates the main theme of this extended essay; my actual rating being 3.5.

[Carlosfelipe Pardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent review of the history of “future of mobility” types in the 3 (4!) editions of Futurama exhibits - with varied names but in essence the same thing - and how / why we can actually craft a different narrative and find simpler solutions. Full of fabulous comparisons and well presented arguments. Definitely a must-read.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great historical context. Bit repetitive in the conclusion.

[John December · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remember when effortless driving was just around the corner? At the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, General Motors presented a vision of cars zooming along congestion-free motorways in an exhibit called "Futurama," and people loved it!

Don't recall that? Well, in the decades following, this vision evolved. It became a world of electronics and plenty of concrete and jet-age technology that will undoubtedly--very soon--usher in a better world: zooming cars gliding along wide, open highways. Intelligent systems and microprocessors will make our cities smart. We will gain an effortless, vast expanse of smart motorways. Very soon, data-driven, next-generation, disruptive, connected, intelligent technology will certainly--in 20 years or so--create a world in which you can glide around in cars effortlessly, in broad, uncrowded expanses of freeways in cities erased of nearly everything else. The worries about dirty streets crowded with people and vendors and noise, the complicated streets and their oddball inhabitants--all will be forgotten, erased in a utopia of motordom!

You've heard this story before--the rapidly-approaching almost-future that never happens. Norton dismantles this nearly century-long shell game in which automotive and highway technology pledges to, someday soon, create an automotive utopia: a world where no one will be bothered by any of the negatives of automobile driving--the soul-crushing time it steals from living, the destruction of city neighborhoods, the pollution, the accidents and deaths, and the congestion that always seems to come back. In this automotive utopia, the loss of transportation choices doesn't matter: you don't need walking, bicycling, transit, or walkable neighborhoods. Why invest in those when we soon have a fantastic age--just over the horizon--in which effortless motorways usher in a utopia of better living on broader highways?

If you don't recognize the empty promises of worry-free motordom presented in these serial deceptions--get wise to it. Read Peter Norton's book, Autonorama!

Norton outlines this succession of promises in a table on page 17, and this forms the basis for his book's organization.

Norton's previous book Fighting Traffic (2008) outlined how rhetoric, regulation, and routine firmly set the automobile at the apex of transportation in America. In Autonorama, Norton shows how a succession technofuturistic visions, spread over 80 years, have served to shore up and maintain this automobile dependency. He characterizes how these technofuturistic visions (pp. 12-13) work:

They "depict an unachievable future utopia...so vivid and appealing that it invites acceptance and approval."

They work to "divert audiences from realistic transport sufficiency."

They "invoke the prestige of science and impart credibility to old, unfulfilled promises... and deflect
skepticism."

They "are not meant to be achieved.... [but to gain] the endless demand for vehicles, technology, and pavement."

They encourage transport consumerism, automobile dependency, and business partnerships, not mobility.

Norton describes each of the four futurama versions and concludes (p. 197):
"A bucket is a useful tool, but at lunchtime, it's no substitute for a soupspoon. The twentieth-century effort to rebuild cities around automobiles failed because like buckets, cars are useful tools that can't serve all needs well. The pursuit of the drive-everywhere city served no one well--not even drivers. The consequences of the attemp were destructive, expensive, wasteful, inequitable, unhealthful, and unsustainable."

I see major themes that power these technofuturistic visions:

* Rhetorical Closure. At the heart of the technofuturistic visions is the implication that nothing should be done with any present-day, competent, proven technology because something much better is coming soon. Therefore, known ways to improve city mobility get ignored: walkable urbanism, public transit, bicycling, walkable neighborhoods, or mixed-use urbanism. Rhetorical closure stifles any further discussion of these known ways to improve transportation and the mobility of people in cities. The lure of the technology that is claimed to be soon perfected is never questioned. Objections are ignored, such as how can a city based on autonomous cars be any different from one based on regular cars--with the same spatial inefficiency, inequities, car-oriented design, and deaths.

* Technological Determinism. Technofuturistic visions imply that technology is so potent in our lives that we must follow where it leads. Technology is held superior to knowledge about current technology and history, empirical observations, human agency, patterns of human behavior, and even common sense. The belief in the potency of technology--technological determinism--has shaped public policy along a parallel track in the same timeframe Norton examines in this book.

* The Lack of a Systems Perspective. Norton provides an extended comparison of his observations to the methods of Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson (pp. 214-219). Both women observed systems (Jacobs in cities) or (Carson for the environment) and saw complex webs of relationships that, when disturbed, had unexpected and uncontrollable results. Jacobs observed how disrupting the "sidewalk ballet" of cities doomed neighborhoods to more dangerous, empty, less livable, and less productive streets. Carson observed that an obsession with eradicating all insect infestation of crops led to greater and greater decimations of the environment through harsher chemicals. In both cases, experts wanted to control nodes of complex webs of relationships. They chose a thoughtless attempt at control and did not anticipate, acknowledge, or rectify the severe problematic consequences of their actions. In these cases, highways and DDT were both monstrous, blunt-force technologies that decimated the systems of cities and the environment. They did not achieve their stated goals and wrought peripheral damage.

* Motonormativity. Recent research into the biased thinking that tends to favor cars has identified a name for this car bias--motonormativity. Research shows a measurable bias toward favoring automobiles in many situations. Researchers discuss how "these biases systematically distort medical and policy decisions" (Walker, Tapp, & Davis, 2022). For decades, urban planning and transportation efforts have supported car dependency as a policy goal (Kay, 1997; Kenworthy, 2017; Newman & Kenworthy, 2021), with a bias that also endangers a healthy mix of transportation options.

* Public Transportation Technofuturism. Norton does not cover this; it would make a whole book unto itself. However, when a competent-edge, proven public transit system is proposed, opponents might raise technofuturistic visions to distract, delay, or demolish support for these proven systems. For example, the proposal for a streetcar often leads to suggestions about pods on overhead rails or some other system with shiny (usually pod-like) containers for one or a few people to ride. These pods are immediately declared superior and cheaper, with no supporting evidence or operational system. These distractions waste money and sometimes derail a public transit system or significantly delay it. The motivations behind these distractions are complex but may involve ideology, car bias, or the easy gullibility of people to believe futuristic diagrams that armchair commenters believe must work. The method--technofuturism as a distraction--is the same as for automobile technofuturism.
For example, see the Web page, "Personal Rapid Transit Has Always Been a Bogus Excuse to Defund Rail Transit" or "Wacky Skytran Pod People Invade Detroit, Australia and Canada." The article, "Invasion of the pod car: The dream of personal rapid transit picks up speed," Boston Globe, October 4, 2009, takes a more circumspect view of the historical efforts and beliefs that some sort of pod system is better than established streetcar or bus transit. Modern versions include hyperloops or any number of failed pod systems with numerous faults in a basic design that does not scale well, cannot carry the needed capacity, nor can be deployed cost-effectively in a city landscape. Most importantly, no working city-wide system of pods like the ones described in the technofuturistic diagrams. In contrast, there are hundreds of operating streetcar systems worldwide and thousands of operating bus systems worldwide, many of which have been operating for over a century but now with modern vehicles. The basic functionality of a streetcar or bus shows an able, modern, proven form of public transit with thousands of working systems. However, techno futurists repeatedly develop the same ill-conceived pod designs that have never worked.

These themes--rhetorical closure, technological determinism, lack of awareness of a systems approach, motonormativity, and public transportation technofuturism--contributed to extending car dependency. The result has been that some people doubt that improving the use of walking, buses, or streetcars to get around is worth it when they sincerely believe that autonomous cars (or flying cars, or some pods perhaps) will very soon be available for them to use to enter that dream of endless motordom. Likewise, highway officials relentlessly believe that widening highways will solve traffic problems despite decades of empirical evidence to the contrary (Blumgart, 2022; Litman, "Generated Traffic and Induced Travel"; Transportation for America, 2020 "The Congestion Con: How more lanes and more money equals more congestion"). However, by breaking our minds of the allure of these empty visions fostered by these forces, we can orient cities away from technofuturism to the real world of people and places.

Norton provides a succinct statement of his main point on page 219:

"Predictions that automated driving will make car dependency work have been failing for sixty years. Numerous innovations have offered important safety and efficiency benefits, but nothing has come close to solving the problems that make ubiquitous driving hazardous, spatially inefficient, unsustainable, and inequitable."
Norton further concludes that "AVs are no solution to mobility problems... promoters of automated driving are less interested in human mobility than in preserving car dependency." (p. 226).

The main conclusions that I take from reading this book are:

* Technology itself is not bad, but the unthinking use of it is. Norton uses the example of a carpenter who wants to use a hammer to pound a nail rather than pounding a nail with a wrench. This carpenter is not anti-wrench (p. 235). Norton observes that automobiles are a suitable transit mode for only some situations. That does not make Norton anti-car, but it does make him wise in wanting to use the right tool for the job.

* We can stop with the technofuturistic visions. The 80+ years since the New York World's Fair is plenty. These tales are simply rehashes of the same themes. Anyone attempting to trick us into another technofuturistic vision needs to stop and explain how human beings, in the here and now, will benefit from a technology that is here and now and competent. Starting with human needs, explain how the clever use of competent-edge technology will serve humans, not the other way around.

* These technofuturistic visions were never about building a better future for humanity but maintaining the automobile as the apex of mobility. Car dependence based on new technologies is still dependence. Norton observes that "In the absence of choice, choosing to drive is not a preference to drive" (p. 204). This lack of choice makes living in cities less livable. We must acknowledge that when people lack alternatives, the choice to use a car for nearly all travel is not a free choice.

* We can rejoice in the good news: we already have all the technology necessary to create diverse mobility networks. The downside is that these technologies are mostly boring and generate little money for automobile or tech companies. Technologies we have now include walking, bicycling, public transportation, sidewalks, affordable housing near mixed uses, and complete streets that accommodate people and all these modes operating together.

* The glue that has kept automobiles stuck at the apex of transportation has been ample parking in cities. Excessive parking has also acted as a poison to repel other transportation modes or land use patterns from gaining any foothold. Norton's two books (2008, 2021) thus provide a background narrative underpinning the emergence of parking policies (Shoup, 2005; Shoup, 2018), automobile dependency (Kay, 1997; Kenworthy, 2017; Newman & Kenworthy, 2021), and motonormativity ("automobile bias") (Walker, Tapp, & Davis, 2022).

In order to move forward in urban policy, the role of automobiles, the car bias revealed by motonormativity, technofuturistic visions, and the policies of car dependency must be readdressed. Motonormativity shows an inherent bias in favor of automobiles in much of the thinking of decision-makers and the public, with a resultant bias that endangers health, safety, and the wise use of resources.

Norton's strength in this book is his dismantling of the con job of the ages of technofuturism. Many people will mistake this as a repudiation of technology itself. It is complicated to get across the idea that the mindful use of technology can help people. Technology can improve everything from electric buses to streetcars, build supportive technologies for people with disabilities, make safer streets possible, or enable affordable housing construction. Technology can serve people by improving public transportation operations, vehicles, and rider satisfaction. The tragedy of technological determinism is that it burns the connection between humanity and technology, with an emphasis that pushes technology to spiral out to a life of its own with less and less human agency, relevancy, and benefit. Simply put, it is a mistake to think that a critique of automotive technofuturism is anti-technology. Instead, fully recognizing the complexity of cities and their webs of relationships, nodes, modes, and connections requires a deep and ongoing understanding of both human beings and technology. Knowledge and research of the right technology in the right places for the right reasons can place technology in the service of humanity and not the other way around.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The conventional wisdom seems to be that autonomous vehicles (AVs) are the wave of the future. In this book, University of Virginia professor Peter Norton argues that AVs may be neither feasible nor desirable.

As to the first issue, he points out that as early as the 1950s, business lobbyists were claiming that AVs were right around the corner. For example, in 1955 a film published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce promised that in twenty years, cars would have “an automatic brain that will park the car” and electronic warning devices that would “eliminate the need for a driver once the car is on the highway.” In a 1958 television show sponsored by the Portland Cement Association, the narrator claims that in the future, electronics would “take over complete control [of cars]… With no driving responsibility, the family relaxes together.” Norton also lists numerous other false prophecies from more recent decades.

Norton then attacks claims that AVs will reduce congestion; he suggests that by making driving easier and more desirable, AVs will actually increase auto travel and thus congestion.

Norton also criticizes claims that AVs will be safer than existing vehicles. Even if AVs are error-free on a limited-access highway surrounded by nothing but other AVs, they may not be able to function safely on a street surrounded by pedestrians or cars slowly making turns. An AV may never learn to distinguish between a pedestrian and a plastic bag- and even if it does, a car that stops for every car or pedestrian may be too slow for most drivers’ tastes and thus unmarketable. But if AVs are programmed to take more risks, they may be as dangerous as conventional cars.

Norton also worries that AVs may become not just useless, but actually harmful to nondrivers. If AVs crash into pedestrians, car industry lobbyists may seek to exclude pedestrians from streets in order to prevent such crashes. And if AVs make the population even more spread out than it already is, the increased distance between destinations may make it impossible for nondrivers to get around.

[David Sogge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The past century’s triumph of the automobile, especially in the USA, has created severe, even crippling dependencies. But in the new century, instead of a pursuit of fairer, cleaner and cheaper alternatives – most of them already in use, but largely denied political backing and money -- there comes a concerted push to perpetuate that dependence on the car, but a car with no one at the steering wheel. This book exposes those policies and their gee-whiz technologies as nonsense on stilts – or, nonsense on wheels if you like. Drawing on ample research into how American needs for auto-mobility were cultivated, inspired by Nazi Germany’s autobahn and aided by massive government subsidies and politico-juridical pressures. The story of skewed manipulation of needs, promoted to keep Americans dissatisfied with their vehicles and the many privileges afforded them is one of this book’s strengths. That history is fascinating in itself, but the author deploys it to help marshall arguments against driverless cars and to re-frame them as a problem posing as a solution. He sometimes over-eggs things with many analogies to car dependence, such as smoking, opioids and DDT.
Despite such rhetorical padding, this book’s case is convincing. It echoes what a mobility scholar here in the Netherlands wrote the other day: “The idea of driverless cars is distracting us from real and proven solutions for urban mobility. We don't need driverless cars. We desperately need more carless drivers!”

[Kit]

There's nothing new under the sun. Norton shows us how car dependency got here, and how the salesman's promises have failed many times before. The historical background of 'Futurama' and 'Futurama II' really ought to be common knowledge. We truly live in the world America and GM imagined for us.

Some key takeaways: The idea that most people have shown a 'preference' for driving is false. In an city where driving is the best or only option, people choose it out of necessity.

Curing the social symptoms of car-dependency will not come about because we make the roads better and the cars faster. The highways will reach a new equilibrium, because cities are like ecosystems.

Cities have been reshaped countless times before, we can do it again.

Toll-roads are a good option for cities, but we don't have them because automakers and oil companies lobby against them.

Overall the book would benefit from making its model of social change explicit. The author appears to believe that things change because engineers and elites can be persuaded into better designs. This is only a half-truth; a dialectical understanding of base and superstructure is needed. The first three 'futurama' pitches were accepted hook, line and sinker. Why will the most recent one be any different?

I have the terrible feeling we are going to see a lot more driverless car accidents...

[Paddy Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Much as filtered and 'low-tar' cigarettes were a dangerous detour that extended cigarette smoking for decades, AVs are a dangerous distraction from the means we already have before us to secure more sustainable, less expensive, more healthful, and more equitable urban mobility".

Loved this book. An excellent analysis of the history of the various Futuramas over the past century, which promised utopian visions of car-dependent society and the reality of the actual car-dependent societies that ensued.

By comparing the Futuramas to each other, and to other "innovations" like cigarette filters and DDT, the author does a wonderful job of laying bare the inherent problems with the autonomous vehicle dream being peddled to us in the 2020s as the latest in the long list of untenable, unachievable motordom panaceas.

[Erok · Rating 5 out of 5]

Norton seamlessly draws a line from the failed promises of past technological auto utopias to the futility of future technological auto utopias. His critique of throwing a computer at a problem is useful for understanding how we're asking the wrong questions when trying to fix the problems of degraded cities, congestion, and carnage. The solutions, ie fewer cars, more choice, and less car dependency already exist, but thanks to the devaluing of anything that doesn't make someone butt tons of cash, basically ensures that planners and politicians will forever make the wrong decisions and subject us to even more car dependency.

[Demetris Kellari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough and yet concisely presented history of technology for automated vehicles and highways. The book gets a little repetitive at the end and the comparisons to DDT and smoking are drawn out. Overall definitely recommend reading for all, not just transportation (or mobility) enthusiasts!

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-1/2 stars. Interesting survey of past attempts at a futurist car-centric world. Overall, I understand why Norton is skeptical of the pro-AV boosters, but I also think he misses a lot of the substance of the current state of the industry.

[Shinhee Nam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, but 30% was a long list of references. I felt kind of short

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars. Dr. Peter Norton is my hero. This book is snarky, and I love how relentless he is in his criticism

[Kerith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought-provoking and important stuff here. Worth digging into, though boy he does get repetitive after awhile.

[Zach Lipeles · Rating 5 out of 5]

cars bad, not cars good

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

taught me a lot more about something i feel passionate about, one of the best things a book can do.