Self-Driving Cars and Wild Nature

By David N. Bengston

People have been thinking and dreaming about self-driving cars for a long time. Paleofuture.com’s article about the “Driverless Car of the Future” (Novak 2010) features a 1957 magazine ad depicting a family playing Scrabble in a bubble-topped car as it cruises down a six-lane freeway, the steering wheel pointedly unattended. The ad copy reads in part, “One day your car may speed along an electric super-highway, its speed and steering automatically controlled by electronic devices embedded in the road. Highways will be made safe—by electricity! No traffic jam … no collisions … no driver fatigue.”

Self-driving cars are, of course, no longer a futuristic idea. Virtually every car company is working on them, along with tech companies such as Google (now Alphabet) and Apple. More and more self-driving features are available in cars today. They’re coming, and sooner than many of us think. A recent Business Intelligence report (Greenough 2015) forecasts 10 million autonomous vehicles on the roads by 2020, some semiautonomous and some fully autonomous.

The first-order impacts of autonomous vehicles will be to transform transportation and mobility. Other travel-related industries will be among the first to feel the effects. For example, self-driving cars could reduce the need for short-haul domestic flights, hotels, and car rentals as travelers sleep en route and have their own cars at the destination (dezeen 2015).

But self-driving vehicles will also have many unintended higher-order impacts. In his book Future Ride, technology writer Peter Wayner identifies scores of ways in which every aspect of society will be affected (Wayner 2015). The lengthy subtitle of Wayner’s book points to a few of these impacts: “99 Ways the Self-Driving, Autonomous Car Will Change Everything from Buying Groceries to Teen Romance to Turning Ten to Having a Heart Attack ... to Simply Getting from Here to There.”

A likely higher-order consequence of self-driving cars that has received little attention is their impacts on natural areas. The effects could be profound. One possibility is that the comforts and efficiencies of self-driving cars may result in much longer commutes and more sprawling development. If you can eat your breakfast, watch the news, surf the Web, catch up on your reading, do some work, or take a nap on your commute, you may live farther out in undeveloped areas. Self-driving cars may reduce the need for roads in cities, but they could induce more road building and low-density development in remote areas.

Roads create serious environmental impacts (Haddad 2015). Natural systems near roads are degraded by an increased abundance of invasive species, reduced carbon sequestration, severed wildlife corridors, and spillover effects as people clear newly accessible forests and drain wetlands. The net effect is a loss of wild nature much greater than just the area of the road’s path, and a resulting loss of life-supporting ecosystem services.

The consequences of road-building and cars have been a concern among conservationists since the rapid spread of automobiles in the 1920s. Historian Paul Sutter (2002) details how this concern motivated leaders in conservation and wilderness preservation. The future of conservation could be threatened by a new era of fragmented landscapes and sprawl. Of the 50 largest U.S. cities, only about 6 percent even mention self-driving cars in their long-range transportation plans (Cutler 2015).

Foresight is needed to identify and prepare for the possible effects of self-driving cars and other major disruptive technologies. Foresight tools such as the futures wheel can help planners and policy makers anticipate unforeseen consequences of change and be more proactive, designing policies to discourage negative effects and encourage positives (Bengston 2015). Most analyses of the implications of change don’t go beyond the obvious direct consequences. But the higher order consequences are less obvious, often contain surprises, and may be the most significant.

The smart group process, graphic structure, and nonlinear thinking of the futures wheel make it a powerful tool for identifying and evaluating possible implications of change. Land-use and transportation policies informed by foresight are needed to effectively manage urban growth and protect open space in the decades ahead.

References

Bengston, D.N. “The futures wheel: A method for exploring the implications of social–ecological change.” Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal. Published online August 25, 2015. DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2015.1054980. 

Cutler, Kim-Mai. “How many American cities are preparing for the arrival of self-driving cars? Not many.” TechCrunch.com November 9, 2015. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/09/cities-self-driving-cars/?ncid=rss&sr_share=twitter#.8p4mjvz:XbDp

dezeen Magazine. “Driverless cars could spell the end for domestic flights, says Audi strategist.” November 25, 2015. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/25/self-driving-driverless-cars-disrupt-airline-hotel-industries-sleeping-interview-audi-senior-strategist-sven-schuwirth/

Greenough, John. “The self-driving car report: Forecasts, tech timelines, and the benefits and barriers that will impact adoption.” BI Intelligence. July 1, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/report-10-million-self-driving-cars-will-be-on-the-road-by-2020-2015-05

Haddad, Nick M. “Corridors for people, corridors for nature: How can the environmental impacts of roads be reduced?” Science 360(6265): 1166-1167. December 4, 2015. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad5072.

Novak, Matt.  “Driverless Car of the Future.” Paleofuture.com. December 9, 2010.  http://paleofuture.com/blog/2010/12/9/driverless-car-of-the-future-1957.html

Sutter, P.S. Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. University of Washington Press, 2002. p.343. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/SUTDRI.html

Wayner, Peter. Future Ride v2: 99 Ways the Self-Driving, Autonomous Car Will Change Everything from Buying Groceries to Teen Romance to Turning Ten to Having a Heart Attack ... to Simply Getting from Here to There. Self-published and copyrighted. Sold by Amazon Digital Services Inc., 2015. p.227. http://futureridebook.com/

About the Author

David N. Bengston, environmental futurist for the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Strategic Foresight and Rapid Response Group, is co-author (with Robert L. Olson) of the AAI Foresight Report “A World on Fire.” E-mail dbengston@fs.fed.us. Image: Automobile Italia/Flickr.

Signals: Energy for Mars... Deforestation and Species Loss... Customers Too Engaged? and more

Vol. 1, No. 10 | March 18, 2015 | AAI Foresight

Inside Foresight Signals

> Harvesting Energy on Mars

> Deforestation and Species Loss in the Amazon

> Can Customers Be Too Engaged?

> Jumping Technology Categories: Report from Timothy C. Mack

> News for the Foresight Community

Harvesting Energy on Mars

A major technological hurdle to colonizing Mars is providing a sustainable source of energy for travelers and inhabitants. Researchers at Northumbria University are developing an engine that can harvest energy from carbon dioxide, which is apparently abundant on Mars in the form of dry ice. The breakthrough also means that a ticket to Mars need not be one way, according to scientists.

The technique, described in the journal Nature Communications, exploits a phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect, which produces energy when a liquid comes in contact with a surface much hotter than the liquid’s boiling point. With solid carbon dioxide (dry ice), the Leidenfrost effect creates a vapor, which the Northumbria team believes can be captured to power an engine with significantly less friction.

“One thing is certain, our future on other planets depends on our ability to adapt our knowledge to the constraints imposed by strange worlds, and to devise creative ways to exploit natural resources that do not naturally occur here on Earth,” said co-author Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar in a press statement.

Source: Northumbria University

Reference: Gary G. Wells, Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar, Glen McHale, and Khellil Sefiane, “A sublimation heat engine,” Nature Communications 6, Article number: 6390, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7390

Signals: energy harvesting, Mars

Deforestation and Species Loss in the Amazon

A third of the Amazon is approaching a tipping point in deforestation that will accelerate species loss. By 2030, these endangered areas could lose 31 percent to 44 percent of species, predicts a team of Cambridge University researchers.

Historically, just one or two species is lost for every 10 percent loss of forest coverage; however, when an area dips below a threshold of 43 percent of forest coverage, species loss accelerates to two to eight species per 10 percent forest loss.

Pressure on land use comes largely from agriculture, as farmers work to meet the demands of growing (and increasingly affluent) human populations. In Brazil, individual landowners are required to retain 80% forest cover, but this is rarely achieved, according to the researchers. A more successful approach might be to consider entire landscapes rather than individual farms, and to promote practices that stop deforestation above the threshold.

The research supports a new approach to environmental legislation in Brazil and the tropics, said study leader Jose Manuel Ochoa-Quintero in a press statement. “We need to move from thinking in terms of compliance at a farm scale to compliance at a landscape scale if we are to save as many species as we can from extinction,” he concluded.

Source: University of Cambridge. Image: Jose Manuel Ochoa-Quintero

Reference: Jose Manuel Ochoa-Quintero, Toby A. Gardner, Isabel Rosa, Silvio Frosini de Barros Ferraz, and William J. Sutherland, “Thresholds of species loss in Amazonian deforestation frontier landscapes,” Conservation Biology, 2015 (Vol. 29, issue 1).  DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12446

Signals: agriculture, Amazon, biodiversity, deforestation, species loss

Can Customers Be Too Engaged?

Increasing audience engagement has long been a mantra in brand promotion, but a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that some audience members may be too engaged for a brand’s good.

Using the popular American reality TV series America’s Next Top Model as a case study, researchers Marie-Agnès Parmentier (HEC Montréal) and Eileen Fischer (York University) examined how social media enabled and encouraged fans to interact with the show and with other fans. Though the show encouraged this engagement, its consequences were often out of the producers’ control.

Thanks to their engagement, many fans felt encouraged to persistently and passionately offer their advice regarding things they didn’t like about the show (change of format, new judges, etc.). The unintended consequence was to contribute to a negative image of the show among other fans. The researchers conclude that the most enthusiastic fans may have thus inadvertently contributed to the show’s declining popularity.

The lesson for brands: Beware of what you wish for. “Ironically, fans may contribute to the destabilization of a brand even as they are trying to help prevent this,” write Parmentier and Fischer. “While fans can be conducive to brand value creation or co-creation, they can equally contribute to value co-destruction.”

Reference: Marie-Agnès Parmentier and Eileen Fischer, “Things Fall Apart: The Dynamics of Brand Audience Dissipation,” Journal of Consumer Research, February 2015 (Vol. 41, No. 5). DOI: 10.1086/678907

Signals: audience engagement, brands, marketing, social media

Jumping Technology Categories: Report from Timothy C. Mack

In Silicon Valley, the blessing (or curse) of vast disposable resources appears to be leading a number of companies out of the arena of computer software and hardware development into such terra incognita as Google’s self-driving, electric-powered car.

Google already has five years of R&D invested in this self-driving car project. However, how well would Google find its way in an entirely new marketplace with technology of a distinctly new level? As Mashable writer Lance Ulanoff notes, there are as many as 6,000 parts in an automobile, and there is a much higher standard for drivability and driver safety than is required for software and hardware.

The price points involved in such a quantum shift are quite intimidating, considering both the overhead investment per unit and the volume of units that would need to be sold to make the numbers work.

As I have observed elsewhere, the liability issues for self-driving cars are likely to take years and maybe even decades to sort out. Unintended consequences arise from even small shifts in direction. The outcomes of such an adventure are difficult to estimate, but they are likely to be substantial and messy. Read more

Timothy C. Mack is the managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc. This report was excerpted from the Foresight Signals Blog. Image: Google Blog

News for the Foresight Community

• Book: The Great Transition. Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown’s latest book, The Great Transition: Shifting From Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy
(W.W. Norton, 2015), is now available for pre-order. Co-authored with EPI researchers Janet Larsen, J. Matthew Roney, and Emily E. Adams, The Great Transition documents the global movement toward the energy choices that are leading to a new economy. As the costs of solar and wind power fall, their spread will accelerate. Read Chapter 1, Changing Direction. Order the book. 

• Conference: Tackling Wicked Problems. The World Conference of Futures Research 2015, to be held June 11-12, 2015, in Turku, Finland, will explore how the study of the future can be used to address today’s most perplexing problems. Among the featured speakers at “Futures Studies Tackling Wicked Problems” will be Thomas Lombardo of the Center for Future Consciousness; Kerstin Cuhls, scientific manager at Fraunhofer ISI; and Sirkka Heinonen of the  Finland Futures Research Centre at the University of Turku. Details.

• Call for Papers: Innovation and Degrowth. A special issue of Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation will explore the concept of sustainable degrowth as an alternative approach to human progress that decouples innovation and economic growth. Guest editors for the issue are Steffen Roth, ESC Rennes School of Business, France; Miguel Pérez-Valls, University of Almeria, Spain; and Jari Kaivo-oja, University of Turku, Finland. Submission details.

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Jumping Technology Categories

By Timothy C. Mack

Over the years, I have written concerning the unexpected consequences for companies of moving into technologies completely new to them, encouraged by their success in other, unrelated arenas. The illusion that success is a quality that travels with its recipient to new endeavors is a form of hubris that seems most endemic to areas like Silicon Valley in California. There, the blessing (or curse) of vast disposable resources appears to be leading a number of companies out of the arena of computer software and hardware development into such terra incognita as Google’s self-driving, electric-powered car.

Vox’s Timothy B. Lee has observed that the data being collected for a number of years by the Google Street View program—which has built the detailed 3-D maps of streets worldwide that could guide such a car—and a corporate “moon shot” culture that encourages broad-based engineering endeavors provide some baseline for such an undertaking. But even breakthrough innovations in batteries and power management would be within the range of possibility.

Google already has five years of R&D invested in this self-driving car project. However, how well would Google find its way in an entirely new marketplace with technology of a distinctly new level? As Mashable writer Lance Ulanoff notes, there are as many as 6,000 parts in an automobile (although battery power does reduce that number a bit), and there is a much higher standard for drivability and driver safety than is required for software and hardware. Finally, this undertaking would require a whole new universe of suppliers and logistics.

The price points involved in such a quantum shift are quite intimidating, considering both the overhead investment per unit and the volume of units that would need to be sold to make the numbers work. While overseas production is an option (perhaps with partners), that choice could become a political football within the United States.

Competitors like Apple are in fact entering the automotive market, but by working from existing strengths, such as the CarPlay dashboard interface, says Lee. While Apple has been hiring from within the auto industry to better understand that marketplace and technology, moving from the Apple Store model to the automobile showroom floor is also tough to imagine. Google does not even have brick and mortar sales structures, meaning sales might have to go entirely digital. Then what happens to the automobile test drive?

New technology and the tight integration of hardware and software is a compelling story, as Apple demonstrates. But self-driving software for conventional cars is also compelling, and this latter approach more closely matches Google’s history of building products that run on other people’s devices.

Note: As I have observed elsewhere, the liability issues for self-driving cars are likely to take years and maybe even decades to sort out. Unintended consequences arise from even small shifts in direction. The outcomes of such an adventure are difficult to estimate, but they are likely to be substantial and messy.

Timothy C. Mack is managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc.

Further reading: Is Apple building a self-driving vehicle or is it not?

“Apple really seems to be building an Apple Car. That's not as crazy as it sounds,”

Timothy B. Lee, Vox (updated February 19, 2015).

“6 reasons why Apple is not building a car,” Lance Ulanoff, Mashable (February 18, 2015).

Images:  Google Blog; Apple.