Disruption Ahead: Will Future Transport Systems Benefit Society Or Drive It Apart?

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A transport revolution in our cities is under way. Ride-sharing schemes, driverless cars and electric vehicles look set to bring us all kinds of benefits, such as lower pollution, faster flowing traffic and fewer accidents. But these benefits won’t just fall into our laps. What will we have to do to ensure that we reap the rewards of these changes and avoid potential pitfalls? Will technological change bring us closer together as a society or drive us further apart? Will we the consumers be the ones who make the all-important decisions, or will we be at the mercy of the tech and car companies and the policy-makers? And will these decisions actually result in a lower carbon future? There’s a lot of excitement about the future of cars: will people be prepared to give up the independence of the privately owned vehicle and use hailing schemes? Given that a total switchover to electric vehicles is unlikely to happen within the next ten years, how will a mix of vehicles on our streets affect the way we live? And is all this talk about cars a distraction from much needed investment in public transport? We were joined by author, journalist and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, Jamie Bartlett; Uber's Head of Cities in the UK and Ireland, Fred Jones; creative technologist at the open innovation consultancy company Five by Five, Eugena Ossi; and journalist, author, and railway historian, Christian Wolmar. The debate was chaired by broadcaster Edith Bowman. You can continue the conversation online using #makethefuture. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Everything is fuel for your creativity with the Lenovo Yoga laptop series.
0:04.3	From the people you meet to the creators you follow, it all comes together with
0:08.0	Lenovo Yoga.
0:09.0	Plus, you get a 50 pound travel voucher and a shot at winning an awesome trip to New York and a Motorola
0:14.6	razor 40 Ultra. Check out the Lenovo Yoga series with laptops made for creatives at
0:19.7	Lenovo.com slash Yoga. Limited time only terms and conditions apply. Engineered to do it all that's a laptop
0:25.8	evolved with Intel Evo Platform.
0:27.8	Maybe 30 or 20 years ago a Saudi might have said I'm Muslim and I'm Arab and I'm Saudi
0:36.7	Now they might say I'm Saudi and I'm Arab and I'm Muslim
0:40.0	You know they're trying to radically refashion their country and they need help from the best experts in the world
0:45.1	Do you want to have your country's people be disqualified from that because of some essentially antiquated point of view about how countries work together?
0:53.4	In recent months it can feel like Saudi Arabia is intent on buying the world.
0:57.8	It's bought up much of golf, sports teams, many of the globe's best soccer players to its own domestic league and it owns huge chunks of many of the biggest companies on the planet. But Saudi Arabia is not just on a shopping spree. The once insular oil- Rich Kingdom is transforming into a major diplomatic and military
1:16.0	player, a pivotal actor in the energy transition and looks set to host high-end cultural events
1:21.6	like the FIFA World Cup.
1:23.0	You know, they know that buying a football club immediately brings you a
1:27.2	billboard into a global game that allows you to completely reposition yourself
1:32.2	or rebrand yourself.
1:33.4	It feels like we're entering the era of the Saudi project.
1:36.6	But what exactly is the kingdom trying to achieve and will it succeed?
1:40.4	Available now from Intelligence Squared, The Saudi project is a new podcast series seeking to answer some of these questions and more.
1:48.0	Britain does have choices. It's not either or situation. We either indulge Mohammed bin Salman or boycott Mohammed
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Intelligence Squared, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Intelligence Squared and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.