Zip: How the mobility revolution will transform our lives and our planet

by John Rossant, Stephen Baker

Mobility expert John Rossant and business journalist Stephen Baker look beyond the false promises of the past to examine the real future of transportation and the repercussions for the world’s cities, the global economy, the environment, and our individual lives.

Human mobility, dominated for a century by cars and trucks, is facing a dramatic transformation. Over the next decade, new networked devices, from electric bikes to fleets of autonomous cars, will change the way we move. They will also disrupt major industries, from energy to cars, give birth to new mobility giants, and lead to a redesign of our cities. For Rossant and Baker, this represents the advance of the Information Revolution into the physical world. This will raise troubling questions about surveillance, privacy, the dangers from hackers and the loss of jobs. But it also promises startling efficiencies, which could turn our cities green and, perhaps, save our planet.

In an engaging, deeply reported book, the authors travel to mobility hotspots, from Helsinki to Shanghai, to scout out this future. And they visit the companies putting it together. One, Divergent3d, is devising a system to manufacture cars with robots and 3D printers. PonyAI, a Chinese-Silicon Valley startup, builds autonomous software that perceives potholes, oncoming trucks, and wayward pedestrians, and guides the vehicle around them. Voom, an Airbus subsidiary, is racing with dozens of others to operate fleets of air taxis that fly by themselves.

Hop, Skip, Go is about us: billions of people on the move. Underlying each stage of mobility, from foot to horse to cars and jets, are the mathematics of three fundamental variables: time, space and money. We measure each trip we take, whether to Kuala Lumpur or the corner drugstore. As the authors make clear, the coming mobility revolution will be no different. As they unveil the future, the authors explore how these changes might revamp our conception of global geography, the hours in our days, and where in the world we might be able to go.

Genres: Technology

320 pages, Paperback

Published November 14, 2019

Reviews

[Ryan Manganiello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely sure, because he never actually came out and said it, but the author definitely alluded to having a hard-on for communism, hence the 3 star rating.

[Zac Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unfortunate disappointment, Hop, Skip, Go undersells on the technology to focus more on the most depressing aspect of any revolution: its financing.

Hop, Skip, Go describes itself as a book about "us", the operators of vehicles and travelers through space. Sadly, it is instead absorbed with venture capitalists and investment banks, the least relatable social class. I do not envy the book its subject, as the topic of "mobility advancements we'll see in the near future" limits it heavily to the miniscule class of ideas which can be imagined currently, but are not absurd enough to be dismissed out of hand. As a result, the book only ever touches on a couple of ideas which actually struck me as interesting-- not the gravest sin for a book focused on how mobility affects us, but a death blow to the book as it exists. With more of an interest in the ways humans react to infrastructure and mobility, these few reasonable advancements could have been the impetus for a fascinating discussion, but the author's M.O. is rather to summarize 2-5 pages of history, introduce a billionaire, and wax about how much of a visionary they are. Throughout the book, we meet exactly one inventor, and even they have left their job for an investment bank by the end of the chapter. For a target audience of people who think Elon Musk is both cool and the smartest man alive, this might find play. But instead, it just leaves the text feeling hollow.

[Mike Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's okay. Far from groundbreaking and I only really listened to it because it sounded half interesting. It goes into some details about the future of transport, which is quite interesting, and how you have tech disruptors like Uber or Hyperloop that are reimagining the whole concept of urban transport. The book fawns over authoritarian regimes and Elon Musk, which naturally would leave the mind feeling a bit suspicious of the author, but to be fair in the former there is at least some logic in that radical urban transport methods can be implemented without too much worry about humans standing in the way since of course you can just dispel of them in whatever method you like since it's for "The Greater Good". The quick dives into different case studies of cities and how they've developed over time was quite interesting too.

[Jun Han · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides an interesting account of how various new and unique factors from the last decade are creating a paradigm shift in we move from one place to another. These include the new AI technologies, drastic increase in compute power, availability of large data, ability to exchange these data through the cloud, and ubiquitousness of cellphones in the population. However, the book reads more like a documentary transcript than a book. The core ideas and technologies are only shallowly explored.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting takes from the coming (and partly here) mobility revolution. We certainly need changes and some will happen while other predictions and promises of future mobility will end up hogwash. This is a considered examination from a truly global perspective, with tech developments from around the world.

[Tapani Aulu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mielenkiintoinen katsaus liikkumiseen tulevaisuuteen. Paljon tuttuja juttuja megatrendeistä, mutta myös heikompien signaalien nostoja ja yksityiskohtaisempia tutustumisretkiä esimerkkien kautta. Suomestakin nousi jokunen esimerkki, joista en edes tiennyt.

Hyvä osuma satunnaisena lentonkenttäheräteostoksena.

[Abrar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a very detailed or well-written book. I learned a couple of interesting things but overall I found the book to be dry.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

書中寫的移動革命，以現今來看也許都還是未成熟的階段，但過個十年、二十年回頭來看，也許就是那麼一回事了。
如同我們回想從前對於網際網路、智慧型手機的想像，也曾覺得那是個夢幻不實際的場景，但現在也是大家日常的一部分了。