FROM POSSESSING TO SHARING
So while we may be a long way away from the world of shared driverless cars, it is possible for us to imagine what such a world might look like, and how we might also be transformed by innovations in technology.
In the same way that the mass production of glass altered how we understood and saw our living space as a private space that needed to be cleaned, cared for and defended, the advent of shared, common public cars may well alter our basic understanding of who and what we are, reminding us that we are members of a common society.
The spin-off effects of such an innovation cannot be underestimated, and would be of huge interest to sociologists, historians and social scientists in general – but it will also impact on all of us in many different ways.
On a personal note – and I write here as a techno-sceptic myself – I think that the advent of common shared cars would be a positive thing for society in the long run. It will certainly diminish whatever fetish value that cars might have as individual statements of largesse or prosperity, but on a wider scale it also speaks about our capacity to share and live socially as interdependent beings.
While some of the innovations in other fields of technology and IT may pose a threat to professions or even wipe out entire classes of professionals, this is one development that can actually bring society closer together, and make us reconsider our own personal understanding of what constitutes the private and the public.
The technophiles may therefore be right after all in this case, for a world where cars are common shared property would be one where our selfish egos are tempered and controlled by technology that equalises.
It may well pave the way for an attitudinal shift, from the idea that “I am what I own and drive” to “we are what we share together”. And that, in the long run, is not a bad thing after all.
•The writer is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
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