Anthropomorphism. One of the biggest words in my vocabulary – one I added right near the beginning of my personal journey deeper and deeper into the world of future mobility.

I was delighted when Adam Hill, the Editor of ITS International Magazine asked me this summer whether I would share my thoughts on future mobility in a written piece. I’m pleased to say that the latest Sep/Oct edition of the magazine (https://lnkd.in/epxH9rQW) contains the resulting article.

For your convenience, if you’re interested, you can see it here and download as a PDF.

In the 80s I was a computer nerd – loving programming and pre-Internet game playing. I then did civil engineering and delighted in soluble problems, focusing in on transport. I did my PhD 30 years ago on the role of artificial neural networks in modelling driver behaviour (not realising I was part of the early stages of exploring driverless cars!).

As my has journey continued, my fascination with technology has remained – but any notion of technology for technology’s sake is long gone. I’ve left the heartlands of engineering and technology to explore the wider ‘real’ world – a world where wicked rather than soluble problems lie, the biggest of which is climate change.

It’s a world of multiple actors all with their own perspectives and agendas. Beware of being taken in by the notion of the ‘triple bottom line’ of people, planet and profit when it comes to technology-based developments. It’s a nice dream to aspire to but often so-called ‘intelligent transport’ is caught up in tensions between prioritising people and planet and prioritising profit and power.

Long ago I became wary of terms like ‘advanced’ and ‘smart’ in the world of transport because they amount to anthropomorphising – attributing human characteristics or behaviours to an animal or object. This is why I prefer the term ‘future mobility’ rather than ‘intelligent mobility’. And it’s more than splitting terminological hairs as I hope this article sets out.

#smartmobility#intelligentmobility#intelligenttransportation#sustainablemobility#futuremobility#anthropomorphic#maas#driverlesscars#flyingcars#3dprinting#hype#wickedproblems

University of the West of EnglandMott MacDonald