Buscar: 

Key phrases

In the era of computer science it is not effective to place more than fifteen people together in the same vehicle. As a school with 15 students for each teacher is better than one with 60, a public vehicle of 15 seats is better than one with 60, for the same reason: it will be able to tailor to the needs of each traveller.

The 21st century travellers, like ones from any other time, will prefer the public trip in which the vehicle picks them up at their front’s door and takes them to the door of their destination. The computerization of transport will make the inexpensive expansion of that type of trip possible.

In every cable, hose or conduit through which a current of any class passes the most narrow diameter possible is used for the precise intensity. Computerized transport will observe this law.

The most developed cities in 2050 will be completely pedestrian. The vehicles that circulate at street level will do so at less than 40 kilometres per hour, giving preference to pedestrians. Speed will be separated using elevation or by placing tracks underground.

When a car overtakes another, the reality is that a driver’s brain overtakes another’s. Once the network guides all vehicles, overtaking will make no sense. The network will direct them all at the maximum speed accepted in each section.

The circulation of the blood around a body teaches us a lesson: the best circulation is the one than can reach all destinations with the necessary intensity using the narrowest possible conduit.

Total computerization means computerized driving in a network. Computerized driving requires some type of track. The 21st century will develop new tracks.

In the same way that a wood piece floats in the water, traffic will float over the ground of the cities and fields. It is a question of lightness. Just as electrical cables are lifted with posts and columns, so too will fast routes be lifted. It is a question of safety.

With the computerization of transport, overtaking will no longer have a function. On conventional motorways very expensive infrastructure occupying a lot of space is constructed so that two or three vehicles can advance in the same direction one next to the other. Nevertheless, there is always space for one to go behind the other. The invalidation of overtaking will narrow the conduits of transport.

In the developed cities of 2050 the super-narrow freight conduit will be extended to homes. The section will be approximately 50 x 50 centimetres and will be supported by columns and fixed to the facades of buildings like telephone cables, taking orders to individuals from commercial distributors.

Probably the most revolutionary idea about 21st century transport, even more so than automatic guidance, the decrease in the size of vehicles or the separation of speed using elevation, is the evidence that all travellers wish to be picked up at the door of their origin  at a time that suits them and to be quickly carried to the door of their destination.

During the next few decades, while the diverse technologies able to guarantee safe automatic guidance do not prevail, demand for public transport drivers will grow in developed countries, as will that for teachers and doctors. They will drive 15-seat vehicles in continuous contact with the computerized network, offering flexible lines from the door of origin to the door of destination to passengers who have arranged their trip in advance.

 The persistence of low petroleum prices during the years of the spread of computer science has been a tragedy for which an enormous invoice is being paid. We are paying in human lives and general instability (due to petroleum wars), in the deterioration of the planet (due to CO2 emissions and other damage) and in technological delay (due to restraining research into electric alternatives and the complete computerization of transport).

The 20th century has been a megalomaniac one: great buildings, great ships and airplanes, great cities, great infrastructures, etc. After its middle the microchip appeared. The 21st century inherited the great and the small, but computerization tends towards the latter.

Every day that passes maintaining the means of transport of the 20th century, is another day with hundreds of tons of CO2 uselessly expelled into the atmosphere, another day with thousands of tons of earth removed to construct motorways, another day of cities congested by the traffic in the streets, a lost day in ecological, economic and social aspects. Climate change brought about by atmospheric pollution is the greatest environmental threat on a global scale. One of the main factors in this pollution is transport. Its complete computerization, by means of electrification and making better use of it, will affect the question very favourably.

For the researchers of the future it is as important to get the answers right as it is to get the questions right.

The second basic date of the era of computer science, after the one of its birth, will be the one of the first day in which a country promulgates the first law that limits the use of a computer program so that it does not enter into competition with a human ability that we want to protect.

 

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