Are we ready to move our society towards modern technologies, 150 years after the birth of the industrial society?

Column by Paola Bonomo and Francesco Grillo for the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

Based on "WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY: WE NOW NEED THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO HOST IT" (Francesco Grillo – Paola Bonomo). Background paper towards the Dolomite Conference on Global Governance of Climate Change. 

Most historians date the birth of the industrial society to 1886, the year in which a penniless German engineer, Karl Benz, filed a patent for the first vehicle capable of moving without the support of horses thanks to a petrol-powered internal combustion engine. However, an innovation of different kind was the one that made the revolution possible: over the following decades, roads, squares and bridges had to be built to accommodate the technology that was replacing horse-drawn carriages. After 150 years, the meaning of the revolution is the same: to move from a world based on the internal combustion engine to a new one made up of driverless, electric or flying vehicles, we will need an enormous infrastructure investment that will radically change the environment in which we live. And of entirely new rules to regulate the way forward. The paradox is that, compared to 150 years ago, we are faster in conceiving new products, but slower in re-imagining the infrastructure that will accommodate them.

The digitisation of transport infrastructure has been talked about for decades. And it is an area in which Italy has little-known competitive advantages: it was, for example, Autostrade per l'Italia that was the first in the world to introduce the Telepass in 1989. It is still on an Italian motorway (Autostrada del Brennero) that is testing tracks moving in platoons without a driver: this may even bring us closer where railways and highways will converge into a seamless system. Nevertheless, it is the moral imperative to save humanity from the dross that industrialisation itself produced that is about to trigger the leap.

The transformation of roads into digital platforms (parallel to Tesla's drive to design computers on four wheels) is taking place on three major trajectories that will be the subject of one of the plenaries of the Dolomite Conference on Climate Change to be held in Trento and Bolzano from 5 October.

First, there is the idea of providing infrastructure with sensors that drive vehicles. Airports were the first to make this transition: technically, planes are already self-driving. Secondly, roads not only become populated with new charging systems, but also become capable of storing energy - static and dynamic - from cars and returning it to them through an induction mechanism when they are parked (or even when they are moving). There is, then, a third, less demanding level where the relationship between transport authorities and user is digitalised: road signs, crosswalk become digital; parking spaces and entrances to the city are booked and the control of violations becomes no longer avoidable: all massively cheaper and infinitely flexible.

However, smart infrastructure is an achievement that requires an ingredient that we have in smaller quantities than the states that at the beginning of the last century were able to plan infrastructure as their historic function. Even the countries that invented capitalism, played a crucial role into equipping their economies with infrastructures: the US federal administration issued the regulations meant to make railways accessible to everybody (a sort of anticipation of the notion of the “Internet neutrality”) so that cities could specialize; the British National Highways were born out of an investment decided by Margaret Thatcher. Today, the West lacks precisely this ability to redesign its physical environment, paralysed by too many vetoes. Some find this to be natural for mature democracies. Vision argues that there are mechanisms to overcome the gridlock.

Rules and investments are badly needed for new mobility to happen. Populating the streets of a city with electric cars and motorbikes might require special road lanes, even just to avoid dangers to pedestrians who are used to recognise the approach of an internal combustion engine by the noise.

Not less important, however, is to recognize that new infrastructures will need experimentations (most likely in less problematic places/ cities); simple but effective metrics so to assess what is working and why; mechanisms to scale up successes by attracting private investments on cases that showed to pay off. Almost all main urban roads in Beijing are designed so that different lanes are dedicated to dif-ferent kind of vehicles (including self-driving ). In Bengaluru facial recognition will soon replace tokens and cards to access the metro . In general, less developed countries show that they may have the possibility to leapfrog due to less legacy. Yet, Sweden is an interesting case: it is now turning a highway into a permanent electrified road - the first of its kind in the world. One where cars and trucks can recharge while driving.

Fifteen years after the invention of the first car, Engineer Benz's factory (before merging with Mercedes) sold about 4,000 cars. Today, fifteen years after the first successful trial - in a competition funded by the US Agency for Special Research Projects (DARPA) - of a totally driverless car, fully self-driving vehicles are still not on the roads. The paradox is that the most technologically advanced society in history is less politically ready for innovation than the one that was preparing to enter an era we are about to leave behind. The technologies are there; we need people to reorganise whole societies around them.