IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 14

removing the language and cultural
barriers of communicating directly
with drivers (often from other countries and cultures), and shifting traditional taxi radio communications
to the Internet. Instead of calling a
dispatch phone number and then
having the dispatcher radio a taxi to
an address, Uber's app automatically sends location and polls for the
nearest preferred Uber car type in
the area, estimates arrival times and
sends a driver to the address provided by the passenger. With Uber,
people get rides dispatched sooner
and more precisely than they would
from a taxi, eliminating both flagging
a random taxi from the street and
the time of waiting for dispatch by
humans. In doing this, Uber streamlined ride-to-person performance,
optimizing for both cost effectiveness
and efficiency.
All sorts of people were put out
by Uber, but customers, for the most
part, loved the improved car service
- until they got hit by premium rates
at premium times, experienced uninsured (or low insured) accidents, and
had other issues with drivers. For the
most part though, the issues with
Uber are between city locales, taxi
medallion holders, and regulation.
However, Uber is doing something else that is not obvious to passengers or those even admiring its
disruption success. Recently, I was
stopped next to an Uber car at a
traffic light. I looked at the passenger in the back of the Prius, and saw
them looking down at their phone.
I realized that people who are trying to deal with Forced Compliance
and Time Compression are using
Uber to time shift, and by doing so,
are gaining an advantage in business and in their social lives because
they are no longer spending any
time dealing with any type of commuting other than having a car get
them precisely where they are and
depositing them precisely where they

are going. Uber users do not have to
stop their tasks to talk with a driver,
they do not have to haggle about
cash payments, and they do not have
to collect a receipt. Everything is
automated on their mobile phones,
which they never have to stop looking at [1]. Uber's streamlining of the
taxi service by removing the inconvenience to people of having to make a
synchronous call for dispatch, spend
time flagging down a taxi, communicate with drivers, and deal with payments, as well as the change from
communication by radio (which is
not easily archivable) to that of the
Internet, has also automated the process for humans doing work. People
can look down at their mobile devices even more than before.
Simultaneously, Uber is recording people's precise paths. Uber
knows what time people travel and,
over time, exactly where they go,
and where they go after that. Uber
knows anywhere people go with
Uber. The aggregate of people's
travel patterns is now owned by
Uber as well as the driver patterns
of the Uber car's owner and driver.
Phone companies have some of
this data as well, but they don't have
passenger and driver behavior in
the same way that Uber does. Uber
knows passenger car preference,
how much people tip, and the aggregate of things that distributed companies know individually. In 2013,
Google put $258 million dollars
into Uber [8]. Google has maps and
they map streets, and their Android
phones can track individual destination patterns. With Uber's data,
Google just got a whole lot more
information on people, adding to its
already near total state of Uberveillance [10]. This data is very valuable
to those who are looking to transform, own, automate, and ultimately
disrupt the transportation industry.
In "Connected Cars, becoming
the Cyborg Chauffeur," Applin [4]
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

discusses how connected vehicles
may be training their Artificial Intelligence (AI) by monitoring and tracking our driving. As the AI learns
how to drive from the humans it
observes, its logic improves, eventually developing a foundational AI
library for autonomous cars.
Uber has announced that they
are developing an autonomous
vehicle. Uber has ready-made passenger and driver data for this
system. They have a database of
customers whose habits, destinations, and preferences they know
intimately. This customer base cares
about being easily transported from
point A to point B, and they already
are not paying attention to their
taxi "experience." Uber customers
are the perfect cohort of people to
embrace autonomous vehicles.
We now have an Internet that
enables automation, which enables
companies to offload work to customers, who have to log into systems
to complete tasks, who have no
time, so must adapt by using automated services like Uber, while their
privacy and their patterns of movement are recorded and used to create automated cars that know them.
It's all so tidy.
Except for where it isn't tidy. The
place where it isn't is amongst the
rest of the people within society
who can't afford Uber cars, or even
smartphones. These people are
left behind because they are part
of what is being disrupted. They
become what the Uber cars pass
in the streets and no one who uses
Uber sees them because Uber's
customers are the passengers looking down at their mobile devices.
Uber's ser vices add to the
already pampering workplace of
those it serves in its hometown of
San Francisco. At start-ups, people
are fed, many services are taken
care of automatically, and workers
have incentive to stay at work and
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JUNE 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015