Mr. Baker, this becoming age of mobility. You write did that so this book is about. What you mean about that pretty. John its an information revolution. Weve been watching it for the last half of century. It spread into computers and overwhelmed media and advertising in the spread into telephones and we are carrying on the internet wherever we went. And now in this next stage, the internet and the mobile machines we will be caring for they will be carrying us around so i think it is going to be an age in which all kinds of new choices going to surface for us and we are going to be able to, go a lot of places and will have a big effect our cities. And at same time, companies and city governments are going to be able to manage our movements and that will raise all kinds of questions about privacy. So is just the next stage of the internet revolution. It. Imagine a scenario, los angeles, 2028. What should be expect. One thing about information revolution is you cant bet on certain things. My coauthor, at the turnofthecentury are the year 2000 and we were predicting the smart phones going to change communication by 2003. And turnout we were way early. It didnt come until 2007. But the changes are so important. So it los angeles in 2020, what will we see predict going to see a lot more choices, theyre going to have spent billions of dollars on public transportation. Theres going to be cars that are semi autonomous running in certain parts of los angeles. Dont think were going to have them at that point were going to have fully Autonomous Cars going around that space but we will have some of that. And it could be airships Like Networks of small robotic drones to carry people and their non across los angeles. Nu for some time american garcetti other pretty and with the planning do for that time. They have a lot of big projects that they hope to get in gear by 2028 for the olympics. Literally think the big thing is about los angeles is the people are really fed up more than ever with traffic in los angeles and set that up that they decided to tax themselves raising gas taxes to Fund Public Transit i think ill for many of them is that we funded Public Transit, many of the people will leave the roads and it will move faster. With these billions of dollars that are being spent in los angeles, they been spent on Smart Transportation or just more roads, and more vehicles. Stephen there not be spent on more roads and more vehicles. The ring spent on dramatic expansion of the metro system. More buses, more electric buses, and theyre looking at los angeles as this test bed for all kinds of new technology. Theyre opening up in the telling people if you set up your new company, when it scooters or Autonomous Cars or line chips, you can trying out in los angeles rated. In that actually happened in santa monica with the scooter. Stephen yes and a lot of people were unhappy about it. Because one day, the birds scooters appeared on the sidewalks in santa monica people look to them and they saw how they could use their funds to activate them and next thing you know they are writing run without helmets, getting in the way of traffic and making some people very mad in the same thing is a guy who set up for had previously worked at over and when it over traditionally is worked is margin, are for your service, and a lot of people who would like it, and then deal with governments once you have a gun since was seen fan base. This verdict did pretty and it angered officials in santa monica. I was just there a few days ago and lots of people were sitting around on the scooters. Peter you write this, if governments fail to assert their control of taxes and regulation, moon servs can over the entire region much the way that the automobile did pretty someone argued mr. Baker, that the advocate witness what we want. Stephen it is to integrate. But if it is so cheap, and begin to us, you might send a card to miles pickup a special type of food that you like. In some of people, it is too cheap, it will get over used and underwhelming structure. If you only have a certain number of molecules that he can move in a certain physical space. Peter somebody sees the role of government in this coming mobility age. Stephen government is going to have to take a much more active role than they did or than the heaven the internet revolution and much more active than jenna century ago when cars came in pretty think about cars coming into our cities over the last century, they basically colonize our cits and 11 describing with murder, developed the constituency, motorists around the world and then in the car industry force cities to build immense infrastructure. All of these roads, and basically to pave much of the planet. So in this next stage, is a chance for a do over. Cities have revisited from los angeles, dubai, shanghai, each one has a different approach to it. But what they have to do, to figure out how to make things work efficiently, cleanly, and also giving everybody a chance to move around. Not just the rich. So there is questions of equity as well. Peter so how would you approach in los angeles to the mobility of generations different than that in divine. Stephen los angeles is a really hard place to govern. There are scores of different municipalities within los angeles county. And there are a lot of freedoms. And is part of what makes United States and especially california, unique. And so and is a hard place to govern where is divine, is there are essential authorities have a lot of powers of devices organizing things so that they can control movement. Theyre investing in all kinds of new Technology Like los angeles, theyre looking to be a test bed for flying machines, for robotic card cars and all oe rest predict all the data is going to go to a command center in dubai. Recommended center is to move people and things around as efficiently as the items on amazon warehouse. Peter you say, it is a question of freedom. Versus efficiency. Standby, and in china, they will have a lot of efficiency. Stephen the question in the United States will be, how do we achieve that efficiency while still respecting peoples data and giving them the freedom that we are used to. Peter in his as an authoritarian government and by has an easier time of it. Stephen yes. I think that is true about all kinds of things with an authoritarian government. They have an easier time controlling things until people rise up. Peter signed by coming from parent to thing on. Stephen this author yet but is vision. It is to have flying airships, early in this coming decade. Not just a few of them carrying around rich people to golf courses and luxury hotels. They would have these flying airships during all kinds of people that would have a flight network. Click the metro system with little stops all over divide. With flying machines caring people back and forth. Peter what have they developed already. Stephen they havent really developed anything. What they have done as they have opened their doors than they have done test flights for the German Company called follow doctor where drone. People across the city. They are not at a point where it is having up. He was stretchable of 2022 for this point machines. But as i was saying earlier, you cant count on dates for technology revolution. If those machines do not prove to be safe, they cant deal with it. Not yet. Peter from your book, whoever controls the data will be in a position to manage movement. What data are we talking about and who should control it. Stephen if you think about on an autonomous car, and is a huge data machine. It will have the equivalent of supercomputers in each car calculating each turn and recording everything that is happening in this car. Much of that information goes upon two networks and at the same time, even scooters, bikes and all of these machines are network machines with sensors. So there is a vast amount of data that will be recording every movement that humanity makes in the city. So who should have access to it. Thats going to be one of the big battles in this coming decade. Ill give you an example. Ford wants to offer all kinds of great services, Digital Services in the car. They want to have voice commands and interface with music and entertainment and maps and all of the rest. So they could develop that technology themselves or they could team up with amazon and give people alexa in the car. So they get people alexa in the car, all of a sudden amazon has access to all of this mobility data. And for has access to less of it. That is the decision that they will have to make pretty how much of the data do i want to the Tech Companies to control because the Tech Companies are better at data. May have services the people want. Peter that you go further in hop skip go and suggest that perhaps that data, that the Tech Companies have should be turned over to government. Stephen for efficiencys sake. Well, i dont know if it should be turned over to the government. One thing, in helsinki what they do, is one of the cities that we focus on, they dont turn the data over to government. They do is they stipulate that every conveyance, whether it is a fighter or a car sheer work best for metro, has to provide mobility data the same standard so that any company that wants to manage mobility and offered Mobility Services has access to this anonymized data and can use it to provide services. So that is the case where the government does not control data but the government puts anonymized data and makes it available to entrepreneurs and companies. Peter Ford Motor Company in your book, you write that piece by piece, Software Firms are out to copper the car in one of the characters in your book is chris thomas. Lizzie. Stephen will chris thomas, is a young man, he still human. It would afford, he was a graduate of guilt from detroit and he asked for an internship afford. Anyone ford and he got the most boring internship you could imagine. So i sent emails to all the top executives asking if they can have just a half an hour of time about what i want out of this internship. He gets to talk for half an hour the chairman afford, billy ford and tells him how boring his internship is and thanks him for an interesting job. Emily ford eventually puts him in this project which is more that is to scope out the future of transportation and megacities. Such chris thomas sees this mobility revolution that we are talking about and he convinces billy ford and others to set up a venture fund that will invest in all of these new technologies rated so that is what he did. And when i or we rent the boat, still doing that. But later he quit the venture fund. Lenny is now setting up an education, basically a new university to develop brainpower for new mobility of detroit pretty i do mean they need to have the talent for these new technologies, robotics and other new technologies to keep the auto business in detroit. Peter has he made any profit from that. Stephen i imagine he did very well. Its a venture funded and has a a good on a lot of its investments in robotics and other Mobility Technologies rated so i think he has done just fine. I dont think hes making a ton of money with his education venture. Education adult think is a huge profit maker. I think he is doing it to try to help detroit. Peter a lot of the Mobility Technology that is being developed now is not seen return. Is that a correct. Stephen when the moon base. So money is going into all kind of start up imagers. In Silicon Valley is just full of all kinds of mobility startups. In some point, this moon base will end. Investors will start asking difficult questions about whether the companies are making money. In the lead as we have seen in previous iterations of the internets, to some kind of a bubble bursting. Many of the Companies Including answer some of the companies that are in this book, are likely to fail. Thats what happens when boom sand. And then others the survivors, will pickup the brainpower the code and the patents and grow with it. Peter whats going on in china with regards to whats coming with the mobility. Stephen chinas all over this mobility. They have massive government funded investments in Artificial Intelligence which is at the heart of many of these Mobility Technologies. They want to become leaders and robotic cars, autonomous vehicles. They are really big on airships. They wanted all. And they want china, they want them to be the leader in technology and also they want to improve life in chinese cities. Because like shanghai and beijing, are covered in smog and the traffic is miserable. So they can organize this right, they can make their cities much more attractive and vibrant at the same time, become a leader and perhaps maybe the most Important Technology in the next ten to 20 years. Peter you wrote that china has the biggest data sets on earth. Stephen right. And they dont have any citizen action groups that are crying or asking for anonymized data. The chinese have access to the data. And they can do with it what they want. And that gives them a big step up. Its quite a bit like to buy. Peter demmes a lot of american suspicious doesnt it. Stephen yes pretty its going to be a huge issue in this country. How do we reap the benefits of this revolution while maintaining of recent freedom and privacy. Peter stephen baker, and hop skip go, you list three different items they think Data Collection this Technology Needs to be judged on. Open standards, algorithm audits, and meant neutrality pretty can you walk us through this please. Stephen sure. If you want a really vibrant Mobility System in a city where you can go where you want to go and everything works well. You need to have standards so that everybody has the same type of data. Its what i was describing earlier about helsinki. If you remember the cell phones back in the 90s and early 2000, we had different standards and some phones cannot talk to each other. And your moved way ahead of us because they had a common standard. You can go from finland to portugal and make calls anywhere you wanted. We need that kind of open standard in mobility so that everybody can build together and not have a fractured ecosystem. And as far as audits go, theres all kinds of ways that companies and governments can misuse this data. And they could conceivably make things happen so that poor people cant move as fast as richard people mature people as example. They discriminate against certain types of people because there not as Economic Economic return. So what you want is not it to make sure that the algorithms are fair. Peter net neutrality. Stephen it is this time, really the idea is that everybody should have equal access to the mobility. To move around the space pretty. Peter having found already inequality when it comes to mobility. Stephen i think our world is full of inequality. Megacities that have transit deserts where people cant get Public Transit to go to a job interview. Or go to school. The idea is perhaps use the next generation mobility to provide more opportunities. This can also change real estate in cities because mobility, people move from mobility deserts because the rent is low. In the rents is low because it is such a pain to get anywhere. So there are areas in cities that will be fine full potential if there werent mobility deserts. So if you have a system in which people could move around, whether it is with the car ship or whatever it is and have access to more areas of the city man, it would have a big effect on the Real Estate Market in the cities. Peter stephen baker, in hop skip go, give a few futuristic vision of the props for the 405 in la would be wh bike path or walk p. A return to nature. Stephen i think that its going to be a while before the 405 becomes a bike path but the ideas, but if you have more people not using cars, using other options to move around, then you can, you wont uses many parking lots. The county of los angeles has an immense amount of parking. I think it is five times the area paris in parking lots. In san francisco, i mean, in los angeles. Thats an enormous opportunity for parks, schools, swimming pools. Most, whatever you want. It does not have to be like that. In helsinki, they have this venture, and its called mobility is a service. The idea is that you open yourself, you know open an app on a cell phone that tells you how to get someplace and has all of the connections. And a lot of transit in helsinki and is all paid for with a monthly prescription the idea is that you can use information this way and package it, people wont need their cars as much and if people dont their cars as much, then you can start turning highways into bike paths and freeways. Peter how is it that helsinki became part of the cutting edge of the mobility revolution. Stephen the pins are very ac advance in technology. Theyre willing to try things first. And i was working for businessweek in the early 90s i was going to helsinki all the time because they were on the cutting edge with nokia and other mobile phone providers. So this is like the next step. The fence arent in the next stage of the internet which happens to be mobility. The question is whether they can be whelped nokia was huge for a while but then it got taken by apple. In the question can they become World Leaders in these apps the movements around or if they will get swallowed up by somebody like google. Peter another city feature in hop skip go is jakarta. Stephen in at some of the worst traffic in the world. And so, there is a company there that is turned these motorbikes that they have, into a taxi service and also delivery service. And they can go westchester through jakarta the kids were the limousines. So once you have mobility on an app, and you can start providing all kinds of all their services on that. It is our delivering food, he can start delivering Banking Services and it shows how if you think about the previous revolution, the smart phone. Back when we were imagining it in the early 2000s, he would not imagine a smart phone would become a music player, a video player, and social networks and all of the of the things that it became. At the same thing is going to happen with mobility. If you have services that deliver things and they are apps, those apps can move into other things like entertainment, food, banking and that sort of thing in jakarta. Peter you begin this conversation mr. Baker by talking about privacy. Where is this going to head when it comes to privacy. Stephen i dont know. And it varies from one place to the other. One thing that is interesting about if you think about the automobile revolution. We had incredible amounts of privacy pretty because we could go anywhere we wanted. We could get lost and nobody knew where we were our parents didnt know who we were. The cities barely knew what we are. You would have to put hoses and county cars across roads just account the traffic. Those so primitive that the treatise treated us like hers. And they had incredible waste. This next revolution has much less waste. And it can be much greener but we are going to be counted surveilled, and controlled much more. And i think it is a tradeoff. And i think a lot of people will not be happy with it. But a lot of people, if you tell people about how interested the cell phone is. How much it tells google and the phone companies and the government about our lives, a lot of people are horrified. We still carry cell phones around because they provide a service that we cannot do without. I think the same thing will be of mobility. We will sacrifice more about privacy, a bit more of our freedom perhaps. Our freedom to get lost. Our freedom to escape. But if it works, we could, we could move much more efficiently and we could have a lot of fun too. Peter hop skip go how the mobility is transforming our life. All communicators are available as podcasts. Television is change since cspan began 41 years ago, but our mission continues. To provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year we brought you a very election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. 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