The Long Journey of the Driverless Car

There has been considerable hype about the expectations around driverless cars but tests and trials have shown that the concept is far more difficult to bring to fruition than expected. Since around 2010, there have been predictions of the imminent arrival of driverless cars. All these predictions have proved to be over optimistic and none of the goals have been achieved. Companies like Waymo, who are most advanced in the field, are beginning to admit that the task they faced is far more difficult than originally envidaged. This chapter will examine the obstacles to the achievement of the driverless car concept and assess whether the models of shared use driverless vehicle posited by the auto manufacturers and tech companies are realistic

Reading Across Cultures: Global Narratives, Hotels and Railway Stations

This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.This article takes its cue from the English critic, novelist and painter John Berger. He argues that what we know determines what we see. Hotels and railway stations, though they differ in size, design and appearance, are places of temporary national and international congress that are recognized by everyone. They become visible or even iconic once their history or their role is turned into at least part of a wider narrative—in literature, film or in other arts. This provides a representative focus by which we may read a city’s or a nation’s past. In exemplifying such connections I focus first on the long-term history of Friedrichstraße station and some of the surrounding hotels in the context of the history of Berlin, situating them within the national and, by implication, also the international context. Secondly, I will consider the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 as an event in which the role of railway stations generated both personal and collective memories across cultures and over several decades