Celebrating the pro-car, pro-infrastructure vision of Norman Bel Geddes--and noting a future anniversary of that vision

As The Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil observes, driverless cars are on their way--in fact, they are already here.  Still, the issues and questions surrounding them are manifold; including, as Neil puts it, not just the risk of hackers and terrorism and trial lawyers but also the risk of another Skynet.

But there's an upside, of course--and an inevitability.

In addition, Neil adds some useful historical context:

The idea of self-piloting cars has been around a long time, but the vision belongs to Norman Bel Geddes, the American utopianist who designed General Motors' Futurama exhibit for the '39 World's Fair in New York. In the future city (as per Bel Geddes' sprawling set piece of miniatures), cars would move in tight squadrons safely under the control of a central traffic authority. They would be in constant radio contact with each other and the road. They would be electronically crash-proofed in a way that rules out random collisions. Speeds could rise, proximities close and road carrying capacities increase.

A beautiful order would be imposed on interurban traffic, and the cascading efficiencies would include a smaller infrastructural footprint, lower per-mile energy costs and higher system productivity (this vision being from the 1930s, the era of scientific management).

As of 2013, almost everything technically necessary to enact a real-world version of the Bel Geddes dream has been invented. But the details are shaping up differently. For this first generation of autonomy, for example, cars will rely on their own wits—their own cameras, sensors and map-keeping—rather than cede control to some master computer.

As noted here at Hamilton21 in the past, the 75th anniversary of the New York World's Fair is coming up soon--on April 30, 2014, to be exact.  That's a date on the calendar with circling.