Please register here for the event.
We would kindly like to invite you to a panel discussion on the future of automobility discussing whether electric and autonomous automobility or mobility-as-a-service options are really our better future.
Two of our panelists argue in their recently published book that these new technologies are not only non-transformational, they are more of the same. They claim that automobility, a political order, is irremediably violent, lethal, and repressive. More than 2 million people die in automobility, with several more millions injured or sickened. Critical opinions are repressed with the use or misuse of science: this, in scholarly discussions, is also called violence. The authors call this the automobility imaginary: a political order with fascist traits.
IHS senior scholars Robert Braun and Richard Randell, authors of “Post-automobility Futures” by Rowman & Littlefield, will discuss their approaches with Katja Schechtner (MIT – Senseable City Lab) and Ulla Rasmussen (VCÖ – Mobilität mit Zukunft) during a panel discussion. Prior to that, IHS researcher Johannes Starkbaum will present and discuss the core arguments of the book. The event will be moderated by mobility expert Claudia Falkinger.
After the discussion there will be a casual get-together with wine and cheese.
For all those who can not be there, the event will be streamed live: https://go.ihs.ac.at/automobility
ABOUT THE BOOK
"POST-AUTOMOBILITY FUTURES"
The book presents an in-depth phenomenological and deconstructive analysis of the automobility imaginary, which is none other than the mundane automobility reality within which we dwell in everyday life. A successful transition to a post-automobility future will require new ways of thinking about and conceptualizing automobility, one of the most significant and powerful imaginaries of contemporary neo-liberalism. This book offers such a view by reconceptualizing automobility in its entirety as both an imaginary and a dreamscape.
In order to address the challenges, externalities and tragedies that automobility has brought upon us, automobility, we argue, must end as we know it.