Intelligent highways are a great idea but don’t go far enough and avoid the hard questions. Imagine, to start, a fleet of jitneys – each is a van or airport limo – in constant motion around Manhattan. Prospective riders have little radios or cellular phones … these “jitney clickers” communicate with central computers, which in turn talk to the jitney drivers. When you are ready to go somewhere (ordinarily you’d still be inside when you make this decision), you press a button on your clicker.
Predictor: Gelernter, David
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for City Journal, David Gelernter writes: ”1991 legislation authorized federal collaboration on a nationwide ‘Intelligent Highway System,’ and several projects in this area look interesting. The idea is to collect information about traffic and road conditions and relay it to drivers by means of message signs along the highway, radio broadcasts, and computers in each car. Drivers avoid tie-ups, and traffic flows more smoothly … Intelligent highways are a great idea but don’t go far enough and avoid the hard questions. They will help us squeeze more out of our customary ways of doing business. That’s fine, but is there anything new out there – that we can afford? And what about public transportation? The basic idea underlying public transportation in the software age ought to be: don’t make passengers accommodate the schedule; make the schedule accommodate them. Imagine, to start, a fleet of jitneys – each is a van or airport limo – in constant motion around Manhattan. Prospective riders have little radios or cellular phones (at this level, the details aren’t important); these ‘jitney clickers’ communicate with central computers, which in turn talk to the jitney drivers. When you are ready to go somewhere (ordinarily you’d still be inside when you make this decision), you press a button on your clicker. If you are headed to the usual place for this time of day, that’s all you do; the central computers have your profile online. Otherwise you hit a few more keys to tell the system your destination. The system responds with the number and color scheme of the jitney that will pick you up and the minutes within which it ought to reach you – presumably not many. You amble out to the curb.”
Biography:David Gelernter, a Yale University scientist, was the author of “Mirror Worlds,” “1939: The Lost World of the Fair” and “The Muse in the Machine.” (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Internet Appliances
Name of publication: City Journal
Title, headline, chapter name: Bring Back the Urban Visionaries: Why Have the Best Technology Brains Stopped Trying to Solve Urban Problems?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.city-journal.org/html/5_3_bring_back.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Falcone, Peter P.