IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015 - 66

Recently, this phenomenon has been echoed in
attempts to regulate automobile/mobile phone use, where
cars on the street play the part of the norm that is being
taken over and made more dangerous by those using
mobile phones while driving. Now people are designing
embedded telecommunications technologies into cars,
and in the process, making cars, in their entirety, communications devices. Historical debates related to the
automobile have been resurrected, and perceived threats
to the public are being challenged as they were in the past.
Mobile technology supports both asynchronous and
synchronous communication without much of a noticeable time delay, resulting in multiple multiplexed communications scenarios. These can be described as layers
of partially overlapping messaging networks. We call the
dynamic structure comprising the flow of messages,
transactions, and information within and between these
networks PolySocial Reality (PoSR) [2]. In this article, we
explore the impact of discontinuities within PoSR as we
examine the next layer of integration of the automobile
as a communications device in society. In particular, we
explore the need to develop software for the social automobile that encapsulates a concept of agency on the
part of drivers and other automobiles.
The idea of a "socially inspired" car is not new.
Indeed, early on in the introduction of automobiles, as
depicted by photos and in films, cars were often set
within highly social contexts: groups of people were
called upon to right cars that had driven off the road,
or that stalled in traffic and needed a crank to restart
[27]. Automobiles with running boards along their sides
invited young people to hitch rides down city streets
[28]. Not everyone had a car and people often helped
each other by offering rides or by running errands for
those who were not as fortunate. Many early depictions
had vehicles with open tops that encouraged driver-todriver communication or communication with others on
the city streets and sidewalks.
What really happened was much less idyllic: people
fought automobile owners and drivers for control over the
public streets and subsequently lost. It was a highly social
process, but not social in the way that the streets were used
before automobiles were present. The situation was social
in terms of conflict, opinion, discussion, and politics, and
was not necessarily polite, cooperative, or peaceful.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, streets were
already shared by several sociotechnical systems.
Private, horse-drawn vehicles and city services
depended on the roadways. Pedestrians, pushcart
vendors, and children at play used the streets as
well. The balance was always delicate and sometimes unstable, and crowds of automobiles soon
disrupted it. During the 1910s and 1920s competitors fought to retain, or establish, legitimate title to

the streets. Of the many street rivalries, the feud
between pedestrians and motorists was the most
relentless - and the deadliest. Blood on the pavement often marked the clashing perspectives. Success or failure on the streets reflected not only the
opinions but the fortunes of those who used them.
Pedestrians forced from the street by aggressive
motorists blamed the problem on spoiled "joy riders," and were in turn dismissed as boorish "jay
walkers" by irritated drivers [3, p. 332].
Although at times unpleasant or even deadly, the
historical social communication over use of the streets
shared a common trait: it was synchronous - people
were interacting with each other within the same timeframe. As cars were able to move at higher speeds and
have a more robust architecture, they became enclosed,
creating an environment that was even less socially integrated with the community outside their exteriors.
Eventually, telecommunications devices became
robust enough to be mobile. Radio phones, then Citizens
Band (CB) radios, were used for in-car communications,
followed somewhat later by mobile phones. These devices entered the car environment and reconnected those
inside vehicles to others outside their cars, who may or
may not have been either on the road (as with CB radios
and mobiles) or on landlines. In particular, the early days
of CB radio exhibited many parallels to issues today as
people attempt to create a "socially inspired car." According to Dannefer and Poushniky [4], CB radio usage created an anonymous, private (by anonymity) and extended
social network that gave people confidence that they
could get access to help, traffic information, weather,
police activities, etc., through communications with other
members of the network. Anyone could purchase and
use a CB radio, and while there was always the potential
for criminal activity or betrayal of trust, it did not inhibit
people from using the network. Trust was implicit by both
having a CB and being a "Good Buddy" [4].
The CB technology facilitates the expression of
closeness, but prevents its natural concomitant of
commitment. This is so because the constraints
placed upon behavior in repeated face-to-face
interaction situations are absent. The overall
impact of the technology has been to create a
facade of strong social ties. Unfortunately, the
social network thus produced is fragile [4, p. 616].
While CB radio communication was tenuous, due to
its anonymous nature and lack of face-to-face interaction, it also happened only in synchronous time. The
addition of mobile devices to the car enabled both synchronous and asynchronous communications, as well
as documentation of where a call originated from, duration, and so on. Thus, the tracking implicit in mobile
records and connections thwarted the privacy found in

IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

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MARCH 2015

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