Keeping Autonomous Driving Alive: An Ethnography of Visions, Masculinity and Fragility

Abstract

In 'Keeping autonomous driving alive', the author studies the relationships between researchers and artefacts held together by contested visions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a pioneering research project in Germany, he argues we can make sense of technological visions only if we simultaneously grasp the role of care, gender, and narrative in sustaining technological research. Instead of focusing on the genesis and expansion of sociotechnical assemblages, the book offers a radically new alternative to the study of visions. Building on literature from Science & Technology Studies, Science Communication, and Gender Studies, Göde Both investigates the ambivalence and fragility of technological visions, video demonstrations, and street trials in the hands of researchers invested in self-driving cars. Keeping autonomous driving alive will be of interest to sociologists and anthropologists of technology, gender, and mobility. It is essential reading for those concerned with uncertainty in technological research and with conflicting demands in communicating science. The book provides scholars within the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and automotive engineering a means of reflecting on their involvement in self-driving cars. Keeping autonomous driving alive offers science, technology, mobility, and automotive journalists a unique perspective on the present realities of a futuristic technology.