Links for November 21, 2015

Assessing the State of our Subways

Along with any new corridors and candidate projects this master plan identifies, we know of at least four subway projects already in some state of study.... BART is still in the early stages of planning, but… under this setup, the second Transbay Tube would cross the bay from Alameda to San Francisco, landing around AT&T park and running under Second or Third to Market Street. BART would then run under Geary (at long last) with one branch continuing pretty far out along Geary and another turning south to serve the west side of the City before connecting back into the BART main line at Daly City.

Yes please.


The Dream Life of Driverless Cars

In these brief moments of misinterpretation, a different version of the urban world exists: a parallel landscape seen only by machine-­sensing technology in which objects and signs invisible to human beings nevertheless have real effects in the operation of the city. If we can learn from human misperception, perhaps we can also learn something from the delusions and hallucinations of sensing machines.


Bringing 'Ghost Cars' Out Of Video Games And Into Actual Driving

The system functions just as it would in a video game, giving you an image of a ghost car when you’re behind and an arrow to show where the ghost car is behind you when you’re ahead. You get real-time data not just of the ghost car, but of your lap times, your current speed (for those of us in the Broken Speedometer or Non-Stock Tire Size Clubs), and gap in time between you and your ghost car.


Bon Voyage, Killer Robot

It is no small wonder that the autonomous vehicle has not found its place as a locus of allure and contention on a par with that of its robotic counterpart. It cannot accord us the thrill of being menaced by our own monstrous equivalent. Could one sustain the delicious agony of having to fret about the autonomous killer machines soon to be unleashed upon humanity if one were to think of them as transport vehicles in which the body must sit, rather than Terminators from which one could flee? No longer distinguishable from the machine and lacking the stability of a solid footing in relation to it, there is no structural basis for the thrill of the chase, no model of personification that secures the operations of the narrative. The exhilaration of heroic struggle is diffused when the differentiating gap that provides the basis for conflict gives way to a debilitating overlap.


Dog sets new world record for skateboarding through human legs