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EmiLFirstEssay 3 - 21 Feb 2017 - Main.EmiL
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< | Reflections on FOSS and the Automotive Future | >
> | Privacy and Cars | | | -- By EmiL - 07 Nov 2016 | |
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< | Jerimiah Foster’s presentation, and the subsequent discussion, on open software in autonomous cars raised three strands of thought related to Free Software licensing, individual rights, and the intersection of the two. First, rising expectations for content delivery to our cars has led to complications in compliance with GPL. Companies that are using software licensed under GPLv2 may be able to circumvent the spirit of Free Software with restrictive hardware. This desire to prevent others from being able to modify their software leads to a second problem of regulation and repair. As more Free Software is licensed under GPLv3 companies may move towards the development of proprietary software to avoid the anti-tivoization clause. The unfortunate result of a rise in proprietary software would be a decline in transparency. The use of proprietary software in cars raises serious questions about the ability of regulators and citizens ability to feel safe driving around a thing that knows, hears, and remembers everything. This leads to the third matter that was raised during Jerimiah’s presentation— the rights drivers. I will spend the remainder of the essay discussing my initial thoughts and open questions on drivers’ rights and what the future will likely bring in reality. | >
> | In the months since first hearing Jerimiah Foster’s presentation on FOSS and the automotive future, I have spent several months thinking and reading about the question, “how should transport be organized in a networked society so as to preserve rights that people have, whether they are ‘drivers’ or ‘passengers’? This question has led to three threads of thought: (1) the precise contours of what that environment ought to look like (2) my participation in the networked vehicular society, and (3) the tools I have to opt out if I so choose. The first proposition is most divorced from my present reality or ability to actually impact, so naturally that is where the lion’s share of my modest progress has taken place. Accordingly, the majority of this essay will be devoted to outlining the essential actors and principles relevant to answering the question how to live and drive privately in the changing automotive world.
A New Language
In an ideal world the development of a new lexicon would be an important first step to delineating people’s rights in a society with networked and autonomous vehicles. For example, the distinction between people as “drivers” versus “passengers” and modes of transport as “public” versus “private” are becoming increasingly estranged from the meanings they had in the mid-twentieth century. If Tesla, Google, and the dozens of others competing in the automated car market have their way, everyone will soon be a passenger. Thus, creating a new language to describe human interactions with vehicles as they become increasingly autonomous would help remind people that the romantic notion of the car as freedom, autonomy and fulfillment of an American ideal— which was at least partially tethered to reality— no longer exists. A conversation about workers and landowners yields a very different product than a debate about slaves and masters.
Alas, I lack the creativity to even propose what the such a new vocabulary would contain—I only know that words will make no effort to propose the necessary new vocabulary, and I will instead adapt the use the labels of “driver,” “passenger,” “owner,” and “guest” as best as possible. | | | Here, There, and Inbetween |
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| Revision 3 | r3 - 21 Feb 2017 - 04:25:11 - EmiL |
| Revision 2 | r2 - 28 Nov 2016 - 19:58:05 - EbenMoglen |
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