2 May 2018 @ 3:00 pm

Imagining Autonomous Driving Futures

Autonomous Driving (AD, sometimes called self-driving) cars were the most hyped emerging technology in 2015. Yet while the science and technology, business and regulatory narratives describe the utopian and dystopian effects associated with AD and thus frequently predict and describe human futures, there is a dearth of research and little understanding of how diverse human lifestyles, experience, feelings and actions will be implicated in co-constituting these futures.

In this talk Sarah presented on the Human Experiences and Expectations of Autonomous Driving (HEAD) project, based in Sweden, who have brought together anthropological design, interaction design testing, netnography and video art to investigate human dimensions of AD futures. Sarah explored how and why such approaches are necessary contributions to the making of ethical and responsible futures where new forms of automation, data and AI will participate in our everyday lives.

This forum took place on Wednesday 2 May.

Biography

Sarah Pink is Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, and International Visiting Professor in the IT Department at Halmstad University (Sweden) and the Design School at Loughborough University (UK).  Her work as a design anthropologist focuses on Emerging Technologies and Design for Wellbeing and is focused at the moment on a series of international projects relating to automated mobilities, smartphones, wearables and self-tracking technologies and hospital design. Her recent books include Uncertainty and Possibility (2018), Making Homes (2017), Future Anthropologies (2017), Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice (2017) and Refiguring Digital Visual Techniques (2017).