Cars and Contemporary Communication| Maps and the Autonomous Vehicle as a Communication Platform

Authors

  • Rowan Wilken RMIT University
  • Julian Thomas RMIT University

Keywords:

autonomous vehicles, communication platform, maps

Abstract

Over the past two decades, there has been growing awareness of and critical interest in the convergence of information and communication technologies and automobiles. Writing in 2004, Mike Featherstone suggests that the “automobile becomes a new form of communications platform with a complex set of possibilities.” In this article, we argue that the notion of the car as a communication platform continues to form a productive way of thinking about autonomous vehicles. The argument we develop is that the dual roles of data acquisition and management, and local processing are integral to any understanding of the contemporary autonomous vehicle’s “machinic complex.” Both of these things are strongly associated with autonomy and the transformation of cars into decision-making machines. We use the example of mapping to argue that these capacities are not unique to the emerging technologies of autonomous vehicles; however, they are essential to them, with significant implications not only for their capabilities as communications platforms, but also more generally for their governance and political economy.

Author Biographies

Rowan Wilken, RMIT University

Rowan Wilken is Principal Research Fellow and Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is co-editor (with Justin Clemens) of The Afterlives of Georges Perec (Edinburgh UP, 2017), and (with Gerard Goggin) of Locative Media (Routledge, 2015) and Mobile Technology and Place (Routledge, 2012), and is the author of Teletechnologies, Place, and Community (Routledge, 2011). At present he is working on two books: Cultural Economies of Locative Media (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and, the edited collection (with Heather Horst and Gerard Goggin), Location Technologies in International Context (Routledge, forthcoming).

Julian Thomas, RMIT University

Julian Thomas is Director of the Social Change research platform, and a Professor of Media and Communications at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He works on new media, information policy and the histories of communications technologies. Recent publications include The Internet on the Outstation (INC, 2016), The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015), and Fashioning Intellectual Property: Exhibition, Advertising and the Press, 1789-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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Published

2019-06-23

Issue

Vol. 13 (2019)

Section

Special Sections

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