Reasons Why Futurist Cars Should Be Eagerly Embraced Article Writing Prompt Writing Prompt: In his article entitled “When Cars Fly,” writer Ian Bogost offe

Reasons Why Futurist Cars Should Be Eagerly Embraced Article Writing Prompt Writing Prompt: In his article entitled “When Cars Fly,” writer Ian Bogost offers
a glimpse into the future of cars. His work establishes different symbolisms of
the car, as well as both the positive and negative aspects of futuristic car
models.Suggested Outline:
Introduction:
• Begin with a hook to generate interest in your reader.
• Offer a brief summary of the article (offering the title and author’s name),
• Assert your position on the topic in a developed thesis statement.
Body Paragraphs:
• For each body paragraph that you write, begin with a strong topic sentence
that establishes your reason for your opinion.
• Support your ideas with real-world examples as well as from the text.
• Remember to integrate direct quotes for further support. Quotes must
adhere to correct MLA standards in formatting.
Conclusion:
• Don’t merely repeat your thesis and key ideas.
• Wrap-up your essay with a concluding strategy and leave your reader with
some important idea that will keep resonating. •TEC H NOLOGY
When Cars Fly
The future of getting around
BY I A N B O G O ST
T
H E AU T OMOBI L E has long
been a symbol of everything
great and everything terrible
about America. On the one
hand: freedom, individualism, power,
speed. The taming of millions of miles of
varied wildernesses through roads, then
highways, then interstates. The capacity
of American industry—Pittsburgh’s steel,
Akron’s rubber, Detroit’s factories.
But on the other hand: gas-guzzling
SUVs. Traffic and sprawl. The abandonment of mass transit. The suburb and
then the exurb, with their undeniable
ties to white flight and segregation.
The decline of the Rust Belt, the nearcollapse of the Big Three automakers
A BRIEF
CHRONICLE
OF THE
AUTOMOBILE
H ISTORY
34
M AY 2 0 1 6
CIRCA
3500 B.C.:
The Mesopotamians invent
the wheel.
3500
B.C.
T H E AT L A N T IC
during the Great Recession of 2008, and
the slow death of American manufacturing and blue-collar work.
Now, after four decades of doldrums,
things are looking up for American carmakers, in ways that would have been
hard to imagine just 10 years ago. Yet
the changes ahead won’t reconcile the
great and the terrible of the past; instead,
the conflicts between freedom and community, power and equity, will play out
in new ways. Here’s what that future will
look like.
1
Google, Tesla, and Uber—companies
1478: Leonardo da
Vinci sketches plans
for a self-propelled vehicle, arguably the first
automobile design.
1500
Baby Steps
Toward Autonomy …
1886: Karl Friedrich Benz
and Gottlieb Daimler, who
never met, each invent a
gas-powered automobile.
1925
that didn’t even exist when Toyota introduced the Prius, in 1997—have become
major players in the auto industry. Both
Google and Tesla aim to introduce fully
autonomous cars—that is, cars that
drive themselves—within the next several years, and Uber recently founded
an R&D center in Pittsburgh with an eye
toward ushering in our driverless future.
Self-driving cars are expected to be
much safer than human-driven ones.
But even if the first robot cars hit the
roads in the next few years, most of us
probably won’t give up driving entirely
for at least another 15 or 20 years. In the
meantime, traditional cars will gradually take over certain aspects of driving.
Companies have been adding semiautonomous features to cars since the
1990s—things like adaptive cruise control, which uses sensors to adjust a car’s
speed based on the traffic in front of it,
and automated parallel parking. Some
cars automatically stop—or at least slow
down—if a driver doesn’t step on the
brake in time to avoid a collision, and
in certain 2017 Mercedes-Benz models,
the driver will be able to change lanes
simply by hitting the turn signal for
two seconds (the car will take care of
the rest). Within a few years, cars may
be able to determine when an accident
is likely and make adjustments to the
cabin—moving seats, closing windows,
retracting the steering wheel.
Even better than preparing for a
crash, of course, is preventing one. Some
vehicles emit warnings when they detect,
via cameras and sensors, that a driver is
getting drowsy. Future cars might take
over for sleepy drivers—or automatically pull to the side of the road and shut
down. Biometrics could aid this process.
If a car has sensors that can measure a
driver’s respiration and heart rate, it
could shift into self-driving mode when
a driver has a heart attack or passes out.
2
… And Big Leaps
While traditional manufacturers
1908: Henry
Ford’s Model T
makes owning a
car affordable for
many Americans.
1950
I l l u s t r a t i o n b y A LVA R O D O M I N G U E Z
WIKIMEDIA ; ASSO CIATED PRESS
D I S PATC H E S
TOM GRUNDY/SHUTTER STO CK; WIKIMEDIA ; TONY AVELAR/AP
slowly add semiautonomous features,
Tesla is taking a more aggressive approach. Last year, an update to the
software in certain Model S vehicles
added the ability to operate via “autopilot”: The car mostly drives itself, but
the driver can take over if, for example,
the car attempts to exit the freeway
unbidden—as it did during some runs
soon after it was introduced last year.
Each time a driver intervenes, Tesla
registers the correction in its software,
which is distributed across its fleet. The
idea is that over time, the cars will get
better at driving.
Tesla’s autopilot occupies a regulatory gray area, since updates to a car’s
software don’t require the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s
approval—though that could change as
the agency rules catch up with technology. Ford or GM would likely never have
put such an untested system into service, but Tesla’s tech-forward customers seem willing to take the risk, even if
those of us who have to share the road
with them would rather they didn’t.
Early this year, Tesla updated its software again to add a way to “summon”
your car. The car can turn itself on, open
the garage door, and meet you in the
driveway like an automotive butler. For
now, the feature is meant to be used only
on private property, but Tesla promises
Knight Rider–style summoning in the future: Your car will greet you at the airport
when you return from a trip or sync with
your calendar and know where to pick
you up after a meeting downtown.
3
Cars That Talk
to One Another
Apps like Waze already allow drivers to
alert others to traffic jams or accidents.
Soon, cars will automatically contribute
to a shared mesh of traffic and routing
information through vehicle-to-vehicle
communication systems. In addition to providing better traffic reports,
these systems—through which cars
1956: President
Eisenhower signs
legislation creating the interstate
highway system.
1950
will constantly transmit their location,
speed, and other data—are expected
to make driving much safer. If a driver
brakes suddenly, or makes a blind turn,
the car will issue a warning to others
nearby to help them avoid a collision.
The NHTSA expects vehicle-to-vehicle
communications to result in significantly fewer accidents each year. Some
cars will soon have built-in systems—
they will appear in certain 2017 Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz models— but
dashboard-mounted systems, similar to
the original GPS units, will also become
available.
longer dread a long drive to work.) Your
children might give as little thought to
the kind of car they ride in as you do to
the brand of subway train you take.
As idyllic as it might seem not to have
to finance, drive, or park a car, there will
be downsides. Once autonomous vehicles are everywhere, letting humans
share the roads as pedestrians, bicyclists,
or drivers could be seen as too dangerous. Driving conventions like traffic
lights and dedicated turn lanes could
become obsolete, and transit could
develop into a pretzled web of robotics
that no human brain can navigate.
4
5
The Car as
Conference Room
Once cars become fully autonomous,
they won’t need to take the form they
have for more than a century. One concept design is the Mercedes-Benz F 015,
which transforms the vehicle into a
“digital living space.” Inside, seats swivel
to face one another, and a series of displays permit passengers to entertain
themselves or work. In other words, cars
could double as conference rooms—and
employers may begin to demand that
people use their commutes productively.
The F 015 design is sleek and
beautiful—it looks like a silver bullet—
but style may become passé in future
cars. Autonomous cars work best as
fleets rather than as private property,
because a car that can drive itself can
be put to use even when you aren’t in it,
and the tech companies making them
prefer to sell services rather than products. Eventually, car ownership could
become a thing of the past.
That would mean an end to the pride
and personalization of owning a car. Not
to mention living with one. Perhaps the
garage, that great cornerstone of suburban architecture, will become a relic.
Likewise parking spaces and lots, freeing up valuable real estate for greener
and denser urban living. (Meanwhile,
the exurbs could prosper if people no
1979: The United
Auto Workers
union reaches its
peak size, with
1.5 million members.
1975 1975
1996:
MapQuest.com
debuts.
1997: Toyota
introduces the
Prius, the first
mass-produced
hybrid car.
2000
Where Are the
Flying Cars?
Flying cars have been part of our
science-fiction dreams ever since Henry
Ford pitched an early personal airplane
back in 1926 —Ford’s aircraft division actually tried to build a “Model T of the air.”
Ninety years later, discarded prototypes
litter junkyards and collectors’ garages,
but no viable mass-market product has
ever emerged.
That might still change. The latest
candidates include Skycar, a flying-car
prototype, and the Ehang 184, an autonomous electric quadcopter introduced at the 2016 Consumer Electronics
Show, in Las Vegas. In 2013, a company
called Terrafugia announced plans for a
self-flying car; it expects to have a prototype ready for testing by 2018. A commercial model will take at least another
five years.
When they do arrive, flying cars
will likely cost at least several hundred
thousand dollars. They may replace the
Lamborghini or the Bentley as the status car of the super rich. But for most of
us they’ll remain a dream, even if not a
science-fiction one.
Ian Bogost is a contributing editor at
The Atlantic and the Ivan Allen College
Distinguished Chair in Media Studies at
the Georgia Institute of Technology.
2016: A
Google selfdriving car is at
fault in a minor
accident.
2070: Traditional
cars are outlawed,
leaving only selfdriving vehicles
on the road.
2 0 0 0 P RE DICTIONS
P RE DICTIONS
2050
T H E AT L A N T IC
2050
M AY 2 0 1 6
35
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