Shift Magazine - Issue 1 2018 - 5

WHAT'S IN A WORD?

Society struggles to name new tech, until one word catches the zeitgeist
BY SHARON SILKE CARTY

art of being a journalist involves
fretting about words. At Shift, we've
had multiple conversations pondering questions such as these: How
does ride-hailing differ from calling a taxi?
Can a rental company get into the car-sharing business? Is a vehicle self-driving if a
human ever has to take control?
And what do you call the person sitting
in the driver's seat of a self-driving vehicle if
that person isn't doing anything to maneuver
the vehicle?
In this new mobility era, the words we use
today likely will change as the technology
develops and gets into the public's hands.
Such massive societal transformations come
with struggles over communication, and it's
not the first time the world has wondered what
to say about these machines that move us.
We went through the Automotive News
archives recently, looking for photos of futuristic, quirky concept cars to use in Shift as
examples of what people in the past thought
we'd be driving today. During our search, we
found an old speech, taken from someone's
desk, in a manila folder labeled "History."

The speech was from 1963, and noted the
many terms tried before society settled on
the word "automobile."
"Horseless carriage" was common, but so
was the simple word "machine." Autos, at least
those that used steam, were also called "road
locomotives." There was "buggyaut," "motocycle," "quadricycle," "mechanical carriage," "road
carriage" and the plain descriptor "device."
In 1895, the French Academy, which works
to defend the French language from foreign
influence, approved the word "automobile,"
a combination of Greek and Latin roots. The
New York Times wrote in 1899 that it hated
the word "automobile," which the paper said

"is so near to indecent that we print it with
hesitation." We think the Times was joking,
but in every joke there is a kernel of truth.
The word "automobile" stuck. And somewhere along the way, so did the word "car,"
which appears to be short for carriage but
also has roots in the Gaelic word "charbad,"
which the Romans morphed into "chariot."
We don't know what self-driving vehicles
will be called in the future, because when all
cars can drive themselves will anyone need to
point out the self-driving part? We need a word
that means something like "self-moving."
You know what would be a good one?
Automobile. Too bad it's already taken.

CULTURE CHECK

News tidbits you may have missed
BY SHIRAZ AHMED

etween Uber and Waymo's shortlived trade secrets trial, a rash of
autonomous car-related fatalities
and Tesla CEO Elon Musk's soap
opera lifestyle, it's tough for your everyday
mobility news consumer to digest all the
weird, wonderful and just plain wacky happenings in transportation and technology.
Don't worry, Shift has you covered.
Check out our picks of the quirkiest news
thus far this year that you probably forgot in
the rush to keep track of the next self-driving
car deployment.
Forget going to your in-laws' this year:
A Japanese researcher debuted the
"human Uber" at an MIT Tech Review
EmTech conference in January. Called
ChameleonMask, this concept allows
individuals to remotely attend events

through the use of a surrogate wearing,
essentially, a tablet that video-conferences you in on their face.
While we've yet to see a comprehensive
infrastructure bill emerge in the U.S., at least
our lawmakers' excuses for the nation's
crumbling roads aren't as lame as those
from Brussels' city officials. Repairs had
been dragging along with no end in sight
when officials explained in February that,
hey, it's not their fault because mice ate the

master road plans. Sure, Brussels, sure.
Progress comes slowly but inevitably, as
we saw in Saudi Arabia in March when
women began taking driving lessons after
officials announced they were lifting a
longtime ban on women behind the wheel,
The New York Times reported. What followed were female universities opening
driving schools, car companies shifting
their marketing strategies to appeal to
women and Uber recruiting female drivers.
Merle Hazard, a singing cowboy who
loves economics, debuted a song in April
about self-driving trucks. "Dave's Song"
features an animated music video about
a trucker named Dave ruminating on the
development of robot long-haulers and -
spoiler alert - robot men that interfere in
his relationship.

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may 2018 * shift

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - Issue 1 2018