Failing to Distinguish Between a Tractor Trailer and the Bright White

New York City, 1925. An empty touring car stands against the curb on Broadway. A man steps onto the running board and raises a hand. Without further intervention, the car starts its engine, shifts into gear, and lurches away from the sidewalk into thick traffic. It heads down Broadway, followed by police motorcycles, 01/07 meandering uncertainly from side to side, narrowly missing a milk wagon, and then a fire engine. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSomewhere on Fifth Avenue, the car makes a wild swing, and the man on the running board lunges for the steering wheel. He’s too late, and they plough into another car. This one is full of photographers and movie men desperately trying James Bridle to capture an image of the driverless vehicle. “The invention of the ship,” as Paul Virilio wrote, “was also the invention of the shipwreck.” Failing to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe car was called the American Wonder, and it was the invention of the man on the Distinguish running board: an ex-Army engineer called Francis P. Houdina. The appearance of autonomy between a was produced by radio waves, broadcast from a car behind. In July of the same year, the illusionist Harry Houdini broke into the offices of Tractor Trailer Houdina Radio Control and smashed the furniture, accusing the company of using his and the Bright name unlawfully and stealing his mail. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFrancis Houdina protested in turn that use y of the magician’s name would imply that his White Sky k S invention was a trick, rather than a genuine, e t i working machine, but the network of h W associations is present from the very beginning: t h g i the car, the illusion, the image, and the crash. r B ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis timeline of the self-driving car begins e h t and ends – for now – with a crash. The second, d e l n unlike the first, is fatal. In May of 2016, a man d a i r r e B called Joshua Brown was driving – or rather, l i s a e r being driven – along a highway in Florida when T m r a his Tesla Model S crashed into the side of a large o J t Ê c 9 truck. a 1 r 0 T ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Model S was the first production car to 2 a r n e offer something like full automation. It has a e m e m w feature called “Autopilot” which offers limited t u e s b autonomy. Using a combination of radar, sonar, h — s video cameras, and machine intelligence, the car i 1 u 0 g 1 can drive itself for hours at a time under many n # i t l s different conditions. Drivers are required to keep a i n D r their hands on the wheel at all times, and receive u o t o j g audio and visual warnings if they do not. x n i u l l i f ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊJoshua Brown was using Autopilot at the a - e F time of the crash. In a blog post a few days after his death, Tesla stated that a truck had turned to cross the highway in front of Mr. Brown’s car, and the car’s sensors had failed to register it. “Neither Autopilot nor the driver,” they wrote, “noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.” ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMr. Brown was a huge Tesla fan, and had 06.21.19 / 18:23:23 EDT 02/07 James Bridle, Gradient Ascent, 2017. Single-channel digital video, 12'00''. The filmÊGradient AscentÊfollows a drive by a self-driving car up Mount Parnassus in Greece: the classical home of the Muses and thus art and knowledge. The journey is accompanied by a narrative on mythology and technological progress inspired by René Daumal’s surrealist novel Mount Analogue (1952). 06.21.19 / 18:23:23 EDT posted a number of videos on YouTube showing are paying Ukrainian hackers to fix their tractors, off the features of his car. He posted his last because the machines are now driven primarily video one month before his death, showing his by computers, and the manufacturers have car, under Autopilot control, swerving to avoid a designed them in such a way as to prevent their tow truck that had drifted into his lane. The video owners from mending them themselves. is called “Autopilot Saves Model S,” and you can ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis aesthetic and technological obscurity still watch it online, and hear the Malcolm breeds political unease, and corporate Gladwell audiobook Brown is listening to, and his 03/07 contempt. An example of this is the behavior of exclamation of “Holy shit!” as the car suddenly Uber, the ridesharing company which has jerks to one side. Elon Musk retweeted the video, become a byword for corporate greed and social and Brown told a neighbor that “for something to irresponsibility. Beyond its well-documented catch Elon Musk’s eye, I can die and go to heaven sexism and disregard for local tax laws, now.” employment rights, and the reporting of sexual ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBefore the crash, investigators revealed, assaults, Uber wields technological ambiguity as Brown had been driving for thirty-six minutes a weapon. without his hands on the wheel, and had ignored ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis ambiguity starts in the user interface, seven separate warnings. While the truck should in which the system sometimes creates what are have been visible to the driver for a full seven known as “ghost cars” – fake rides in the user’s seconds leading up to the crash, a portable DVD vicinity, that are generated to convince the user player was found in the wreckage, and the truck that the service is more active than it really is. driver testified that Brown had been watching a Rides are tracked, without the user’s knowledge, Harry Potter movie when his car went under the and this God’s-eye view is used to stalk high- truck. It was still playing in the wreckage. profile clients. A program called Greyball has ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn 1971, in an essay for the Automobile been used to deny rides to government Association’s magazine Drive, J. G. Ballard wrote: employees investigating the company’s numerous transgressions. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut perhaps Uber’s greatest perceived sin – If I were asked to condense the whole of the and the one that takes us back to the self-driving present century into one mental picture I car – is the social atomization it produces. Taxi would pick a familiar everyday sight: a man y drivers are no longer employees but precarious k S in a motor car, driving along a concrete contractors. Riders are alienated individuals, e t highway to some unknown destination É I i contributing to the offshoring of tax revenues, h W think that the 20th century reaches almost the decline of public transport services, and the t h g its purest expression on the highway. Here i class divisions and congestion of city streets. r B we see, all too clearly, the speed and The ultimate goal of Uber’s business, whether e h t violence of our age, its strange love affair that’s driving cars or delivering takeout, is to d e l with the machine and, conceivably, with its n replace its human workers entirely with d a i r 1 r e own death and destruction. B machines. It’s own self-driving car program is l i s a e r well advanced, and its retention of human T m r It’s important to note that the self-driving car is a employees is ultimately a matter of cost. o J t Ê c not, in itself, dangerous. As Tesla noted, there is 9 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊUnruly humans, despite their lingering a 1 r 0 T on average one fatality for every 60 million desire for the freedoms of city life, are, for the 2 a r n Autopilot miles driven worldwide. Mr. Brown was e moment, marginally cheaper than pliable e m e m the first known fatality in over 130 million miles w machines. But this situation will not last much t u e s where Autopilot was in charge. But then, the b longer, and the self-driving car is a herald of all h — danger posed by the self-driving car is not s kinds of automation, which will deprive millions i 1 u 0 g merely one of road death. It is one of lack of 1 of work in the coming decades. n # i t l understanding, and lack of control. s ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAll of this was forecast by Ballard in that a i n D r ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAs Ballard noted in his essay, the appeal of 1971 essay. Nationwide traffic reports, satellite u o t o j older cars is that they are comprehensible. They g navigation, direct-debit toll roads, and the x n i u l l i are “rooted in the 19th Century – a visible and f remote electronic control of the vehicle are all a - easily grasped technology of pistons, flywheels e F predicted. “Sooner or later,” he wrote, “it will and steaming valves – ... a far cry from the new become illegal to drive a car with a steering technologies of the late 20th century – a silent wheel. The private car will remain, but one by one and mysterious realm of invisible circuitry.” This its brake pedal, accelerator and control systems, tendency has only accelerated in our own time, like the atrophying organs of our own bodies, will from black-box devices to remote and be removed.” With those control systems goes inscrutable cloud platforms.

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