Will Americans be able to adapt to the autonomous car?
By Adam Waytz
This article arises from Future Tense,a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate.
Over the past 20 years, cultural psychology research has confirmed what pop-culture purveyors and marketers have long suspected: that what defines American culture is an emphasis on independence, autonomy, and choice. We belt out songs like Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and patronize restaurants with slogans like, "Have it your way, right away." While we embrace our unalienable rights, we abhor the value that other cultures place on collective conformity and obedience to authority. After the 2008 Beijing Olympic Game opening ceremony, for example, Americans collected stories about how the Chinese participants in the ceremony were expected to sacrifice for the collective, wearing adult diapers and enduring heatstroke so the nationalistic show could go on....
This American emphasis on the individual's sovereignty poses a problem for new technologies designed precisely to deny personal agency. Autonomous technological agents—from military drones to the self-driving car—are increasingly prevalent. Their potential benefits and conveniences are immense. Yet as the currently cutting-edge becomes commonplace, these technologies could bump up against the prized American autonomy.
"It is important here to recognize the question of temporality. Symbolic significance may shift, often dramatically, over a period of time. What was once shockingly alien may eventually appear reassuringly familiar. The way in which we engage with architecture must therefore be seen not as a static condition, but as a dynamic process." Katodrytis
Architecture is about defining space, orchestrating movement, and embracing an awareness of the human condition.
Designing architecture requires a process-based mentality where one evolves an idea through learning, making, collaboration, and intuition.Architects must foster the ability to gather, abstract and control information to establish innovative and novel buildings- also, theories, diagrams, collaborations, contracts, logics, scripts, artworks, spaces, machines, technologies, installations…
1)Curiosity is critical to making architecture. It is the trait that seeks and gathers information for learning, as well as, promotes tenacity – the desire to keep making decisions and refining them without fear of the wrong answer.
2)Creativity is critical to making architecture. It requires one to be curious, ask questions and challenge pre-conceived notions. It is the ability to produce solutions to problems that arise in the design process & design making. It is not limited to making pretty pictures; it requires one to see larger themes and connections.
3)Convictions are critical to making architecture. They require designers to know themselves. Strong convictions induce passion into the design process and ultimately into the architecture.
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