Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car - Hardcover

by Anthony M. Townsend (Author)

For decades we have dreamed of building an automobile that can drive itself. But as that dream of autonomy draws close, we are discovering that the driverless car is a red herring. When self-driving technology infects buses, bikes, delivery vans, and even buildings...a wild, woollier, future awaits.

Technology will transform life behind the wheel into a high-def video game that makes our ride safer, smoother, and more efficient. Meanwhile, autonomous vehicles will turbocharge our appetite for the instant delivery of goods, making the future as much about moving things as it is about moving people. Giant corporations will link the automated machines that move us to the cloud, raising concerns about mobility monopolies and privatization of streets and sidewalks. The pace of our daily lives and the fabric of our cities and towns will change dramatically as automated vehicles reprogram the way we work, shop, and play.

Ghost Road is both a beacon and a warning; it explains where we might be headed together in driverless vehicles, and the choices we must make as societies and individuals to shape that future.

Back Jacket

Praise for Anthony M. Townsend and Smart Cities

Townsend [is] the rare technologist who is in the know without being in the tank.
- Daniel Brook, New York Times Book Review

An ambitiously wide-ranging, admirably clear-eyed, and ultimately humanistic guidebook to the connected city.
- Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic

Compelling...Townsend begins a conversation.
- Melanie E. Moses, Nature

Anthony Townsend's terrific book looks at the historic relationship of urban and industrial development to new technologies.
- Architecture Today

Townsend's interest in smart cities is more than merely technological: he offers an entertaining history of urban planning's visionaries and villains, the technological breakthroughs and the spectacular failures that brought us to this crossroads.
- Tim Smedley, New Scientist