Cybercommunities won't stop texting but they will help save lives

Cybercommunities were imagined long before texting on highways could be blamed for lethal bus crashes. It was never difficult to anticipate that everything to do with motor vehicles was questionable if not outright dangerous. Ralph Nader wrote "Unsafe at Any Speed" a half century ago. It was the wonderful precursor to seat belts. Today it is in the cybercommunities list of delaying actions. A delaying action is anything that prevents us from imagining the world that is largely Car Free. Google's driverless cars and Elon Musk's relentless efforts to extend cars forever join Nader.

They are delaying actions.

Why car free?

The driverless car is one of the strongest arguments for going car free. The purpose of cars was to free people to explore wherever they liked out on the Open Road. Driverless cars imply an aging population and too much congestion to make driving an adventure anymore. The compelling arguments for cybercommunities have to do with the positive reason for cars in the first place. Going car free is the true new frontier.

New Frontier?

When Frederick Jackson Turner propounded his famous frontier thesis it fit right in with the superficial advertising that persists today, from cars to underwear. It celebrated the open road westward and invites us to see everything in terms of advance and rough, masculine individualism.

This zeitgeist requires some adjustment to deal with the whole of reality. Today's open road is now endless concrete strips where the independence of texting is in mortal conflict with the rules of the road. To say it simply, the new frontier is not west or east, north or south. It is inside all of us and the time is getting short.

The world beyond lethal bus crashes

The automotive world depends on a vision of capitalism that is conservative because it ekes out profit from dying resources. If we are the new frontier, our potential is massive and we need not befoul the environment and have a thing-intensive economy. We can expand ourselves. We can measure wealth in terms of personal achievement. We can think of a future that needs no cars because we now learn to live together.