The Autocene

The outcomes of the 20th Century ‘auto-motive complex’--individualistic autonomy, autopoetic infrastructure development, and automatic proliferation--are in many ways repeating today in the trajectories of autonomous vehicle development. In other ways, the logics and dynamics that enabled this planetary mobility are being reorganized by the expansion of platform automation. This talk frames this legacy as "the Autocene," an era that predates and may well surpass the Anthropocene, from the perspective of machine steerage. It reviews the legacies of platform automobility, prompting a more expansive rethinking of how past precedents shape the intelligent design and distribution of the Autocene to come.