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Towards A Unified Theory Of Transportation And Communication:

The need to develop a theoretical means to study the impact of various existing and proposed forms of transportation and communication on economic, cultural, social, and land use patterns.

By John Lobell

Submitted to:

International Symposium on Urban Housing and Transportation

Dr. Vasily Kouskoulas, Technical Committee Chairman, Civil Engineering Department, Wayne State University, Detroit Mich. 48202

Spring 1975

1. TELEVISION, BUILDINGS, AND TRANSPORTATION

Several months ago my wife Mimi and I went to the Museum of Natural History in New York. At the entrance we were accosted by a woman who asked Mimi to fill out a questionnaire on how often we go to museum and why. The problem is that very few people are visiting the Museum of natural History these days. On the other side of Central Park, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there were half hour waiting lines to get into some of the exhibits, and you could hardly move in the lobby.

                 

Mimi's remark, as she filled in the five pages of questions, was: "If they want to know why no one goes to the museum I could tell them. It's because of television."

                 

Of course. As I thought about it, I realized that the art at the Metropolitan can never be adequately shown on television (not to take anything away from Kenneth Clark) while such television shows as "Wild Kingdom", on every week, do a much better job of showing us what wild animals look like and how they live than do the stuffed animals in glass showcases at the museum.

A vital educational role once filled by a building to which you had to travel by private or public transportation was now being filled at home by television.

2. THE NEED FOR TRANSPORTATION THEORY    

Architecture and planning, indeed almost all of our economic, social, and political lives are constantly being affected by existing and new forms of transportation and communication. An obvious example has been the redistribution of population in America over the past thirty years into suburbs as a consequence of the automobile and modern highways. Television played no less a role in making this redistribution possible by allowing access to culture and entertainment for those in the suburbs who would not have been able to gather in central areas for such services.

                 

However, despite the obvious importance of transportation and communication (both of which will be treated together in this paper for pragmatic and theoretical reasons to be given later) in all areas of our national life, there exists no unified body of theory to use in analyzing the impact of existing or proposed systems. There is a substantial body of information theory, but it has not been developed to study the impact of communication on social and cultural patterns.

                 

The present energy crisis/fuel shortage provides an excellent opportunity to bemoan the lack of a functioning theory. It should be apparent that many of the tasks performed by automobiles and other intensive energy forms of physical movement might easily be taken over by low energy forms or electronic communication such as television. Thus television might relieve the necessity to drive to the movies for entertainment, picture telephones with print-outs might relieve the need for some business trips and even for commuting if more work can be done at home, and cable television catalogs for ordering consumer gods might relieve the need for driving to a store.

These are only a few of many examples about which we can all speculate. The point is that these changes are already taking place, that they will have to take place more rapidly, and that we lack the conceptual tools to evaluate these changes and to push them in directions which will bring about the most desired consequences.

In each of the examples I gave, while there is a decrease in people moving about, there is not necessarily a decrease in economic activity or in the amount of useful and meaningful information exchanged. This paper will develop the framework of a theory for dealing with these issues.

3. TRANSPORTATION AS AN ANTI-ENTROPIC ACTIVITY

The dictionary definition of transportation involves carrying, moving, or conveying from one place to another. While such a brief dictionary definition would of course be inadequate for the serious study of transportation, the problem with this definition is fundamental. We might ask the question: If we move something from a place where it serves us no purpose to another place where it also serves us no purpose, is that transportation? I would say not. My definition of transportation would be the moving of people, goods, or services from a place of less work potential to a place of greater work potential. Any other kind of movement is random and meaningless and need not concern us in the study of transportation. Note that this definition includes any kind of movement which serves any purpose for anyone. Thus if I drive to view a sunset I am moving myself to a place where my potential for receiving the visual information of the sunset is greater.

                 

Through this definition we can see that transportation is an anti-entropic activity if entropy is the measure of the frequency with which an event occurs in a system (and the direction of entropy is the decrease of he likelihood of the occurrence.) The purpose of transportation is to make the desired event occur and therefore to decrease entropy. Similarly, if the amount of energy in a closed system remains constant, but the amount available for work decreases through entropy, transportation has as its objective the increase of the energy available for work. In looking at information theory we see that transportation accomplished this task by putting energy in the form of information into the system.

4. INFORMATION THEORY: THE IDENTITY OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION

Seeing transportation in terms of entropy suggests a relationship of transportation to communication, perhaps not unlike the relationship between matter and energy seen in Einstein's formula, E=Mc2, which shows us that matter and energy are simply two different expressions of the same thing. The theoretical background for this assumption lies in the paradox of Maxwell's demon. Maxwell had hypothesized a situation in which work could come out of a system without any going in. The paradox stood until it was realized that the information put in was in value equal to the work gotten out. This relationship between information and work, further elaborated in information theory, becomes the basis for assuming an identity between transportation and communication.

                 

Once this identity is established, the powerful tools of information theory become available to transportation. First published as a paper in 1948, Claude E. Shannon's work on information theory has been fundamental to all developments since. Shannon established the concepts of source, transmitter, channel, receiver, destination, and noise. This allowed a clear means of describing the components of any system. He also established the "bit" as a unit measuring information transmitted in terms of the likelihood of a certain action after receiving information divided by the likelihood of that action before receiving the information. Again we see the similarity of this approach to that in which we define transportation as the difference in work potential at one location vs. another.

                 

With this concept we can eventually determine the theoretical minimum amount of energy needed to accomplish a given task and thereby sort through various alternatives in transportation and communication to find the one most economically suited. We can understand the motivation of the commuter to move from a place where he has less potential of doing his work (his home) to a place where he has greater potential of doing his work (his office, where his papers are and his fellow workers can reach him). In transporting himself, the commuter has taken a step to increase the frequency with which a given event (accomplishing his work) will occur, and has therefore engaged in an anti-entropic activity. However, there are other ways our commuter can accomplish these same objectives. He can increase his work potential and the frequency with which he can accomplish his work by bringing his papers and the voices and faces of his fellow workers to his home through a picture telephone and telephone Xerox machine. The use of these two devices, and their more sophisticated descendents to come, can accomplish the same task of increasing work potential which was formerly accomplished by commuting, and do so at a great savings in energy.

                 

None of these observations are new. The purpose here is to put both conventional transportation and new forms of communication into the same theoretical framework, namely information theory so that they may both eventually be treated with the same theoretical tools, and eventually with the same mathematical formulas.

5. THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF VARIOUS FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION

The above proposal, that both transportation and communication can be understood in terms of entropy and information theory, will make it easier to economically evaluate various systems, but does not deal with social and cultural issues. In this section I will outline an approach to deal with such issues.

                 

In evaluating any existing or proposed system of transportation or communication we might ask three questions: 1) What direct functional needs are intended to be served by the system and what are the alternatives? 2) What are the indirect functions or consequences of a system and what are the non-rational motivations for its use? 3) What are the social and cultural effects of a system through its role as extension?

                 

These questions might be expanded on using the example of the automobile. The first question is the one most frequently asked in analyzing any system. In the case of the automobile, the direct function to be served is highly flexible and continuous individual door-to-door access between any two points in North America. By highly flexible I mean that you can use the same automobile with no modifications as an economical means of driving two blocks to buy a toothbrush, or driving from New York to Los Angeles with our belongings to go to college. By continuous I mean that you do not have to change or mix systems to make it work (such as taking a bus from an airplane), by individual I mean your car is unshared and at your personal disposal, and by door-to-door I mean that the car takes you where you want to go, not a block from where you want to go. There are a few alternatives which can do all of this, although a dial-a-bus system can do some of it and an automated highly system would do all of it.

This first kind of analysis is always made. The second kind is done less often. The indirect functions or consequences of the automobile include providing a prop for the American economy and producing air pollution. The non-rational motivations for using the automobile include privacy and complete freedom of choice in destination. These kinds of issues will have to be taken into account if we do not wish to have the economic life of the country depend on the survival of an archaic industry, if we ever want to free our cities of pollution, and if we do not want to build expensive high-technology mass transit systems which people reject in favor of their automobiles. We will have to be very serious in the future about analyzing the indirect functions of a system and the non-rational motivations for its use.

                 

The third question in analyzing an existing or proposed system is a study of its social and cultural effects through its role as extension. This is the question least often asked and the one which is probably the most important in understanding the full impact of a system on our lives.

To understand transportation and communication systems (or any technology for that matter) we must realize that technologies affect us not only by altering our external environment, but more important by altering our internal environment. That is to say, a technology, such as the automobile or television, changes us psychologically. In understanding the automobile as an extension of our selves, we might look at it as a front porch on wheels rather than a horseless carriage. As such we can see it changing the experiences we would have on the front porch by detaching those experiences form the home. Thus making out, for example, can be taken further since it is independent of the supervision of parents, leading ultimately to the creation of the American teenager, earlier marriages, and drastic changes in the family structure. All of these come about due to the psychological effects the automobile has on us, the changes it makes in the structures of our personalities.

                 

Similarly, if the television is understood not as a radio with a picture, but rather as a front stoop on the twentieth floor, then we can begin to understand some of the effects it has on us individually and as a culture. In the case of television, Marshall McLuhan (who originated this kind of analysis in his book Understanding Media ) refers to the ultimate consequence as being the "global village."

                 

The kinds of analysis I have referred to in the cases of the automobile and television are just crude examples of what will have to become a highly sophisticated field if we are to adequately understand and eventually deal with the new technologies which are entering our culture. Lewis Mumford has done a lot to develop this kind of thinking and McLuhan has taken it quite far on a speculative plane. It remains to do the serious work of pinning down a useful way to handle these problems. To refer briefly to one example, the hand-held programmable calculator/computers now available are going to being about immense changes in our culture by eventually changing our entire relationship with our minds. We should have the means of predicting and dealing with these changes.

6. ANALYSIS OF FUTURE FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION

What are some of the questions which might be raised about proposed future forms of transportation and communication using the concepts raised in this paper? While space will not permit a detailed analysis of any one system, I will briefly refer to a few in order to show some of the issues which need exploration.

For a while series of reasons (the decay of railroads, the obsolescence of he automobile, and the problems with airplanes, including fuel consumption and distance form airport to center city) this country may well soon explore the building of a new high-speed land transportation system. Two extremes in such a system are possible. One is the gravity vacuum tube system (GTV) proposed by L. K. Edwards, which would send long trains from center city to center city at speeds up to 500 miles per hour at extremely high efficiency using underground tubes and gravity for much of its propulsion. The other is the Glideway System proposed at M.I.T. in its report No. 6 of that title, which would have surface cars suspended in guideways by air cushions or magnetism, and would be able to send passengers to a variety of points of arrival at speeds up to 350 miles per hour propelled by linear induction motors.

Engineers and economists can debate the feasibility and practicality of these two systems, but an equally important issue in deciding between these two systems is their effects on us and on our social and cultural patterns. The GVT system runs center city to center city with no means of stopping in between and no chance of adding future spurs. The Glideway system can have numerous stops and can have side spurs off in all directions. The effect of the GVT system would be a reinforcing of dense urban areas surrounded by less dense rural areas. The effect of the Glideway system would be sprawl or a uniformity of development over much of the country. In part, the difference in effects on development would be similar to those of the railroad vs. the automobile. In the choice between these two systems lies the choice between two radically different lifestyles for the country. The kind of tools for theoretical analysis proposed in this paper would be essential in dealing with such a choice.

Another example of a new system which will change our lives is he picture telephone. When more developed picture telephones become available, they will bring vast changes in our personal, social, economic and sexual lives. The implications for sexuality alone are more profound than those of the pill. Again a means of assessing the impact of such a technology is needed.

 

The final example I will refer to is the application of laser fiber optics to cable television. At this time, the cable television companies can deliver between ten and twenty channels over coaxial cable. A laser beam, fed through cable of continuous flexible glass fibers, could carry a thousand channels. A bundle of a thousand such cables could deliver a million channels to our home television set. Think for a moment of the implications for other forms of transportation and communication of having access to thousands and even a million channels on your home television. Such a possibility would lead to vast changes in psychological, social, cultural, economic, and physical structures. Hundreds of channels would be available to every major university in the country. Patterns of education, work, entertainment, and housing would all change drastically. Again, the theoretical and analytical tools proposed in this paper would make it possible to deal with such changes.

 

7. TODAY'S PROBLEMS AND THE LACK OF THEORY

I am going to propose a brief scenario for the future development of transportation and communication in this country. There could be many such scenarios; the importance of this one is only as an example of the kind of thinking and the kinds of theoretical and analytical tools which I believe are needed.

        

We know that there are going to be extensive changes in transportation in this country over the next fifteen or twenty years. Change will of necessity come from the shift away from a petroleum intensive economy, from the general decline in purchase and the use of automobiles, from the need for some response to the railroad situation, and from the unplanned but drastic effects of various forms of electronic communication. If we as planners are to have any positive influence on these changes, we must get a grip on the situation.

        

In this scenario, let us envision a response to transportation problems growing out of proposals for increased gasoline taxes. An additional federal tax of 5 cents per gallon might be implemented, and that tax would increase 5 cents each year for five years or so to a total tax of 30 cents or more per gallon. During that time however, Detroit promises a 40 percent increase in fuel economy, so that the cost per mile to the average driver does not increase nearly as much as the cost per gallon. With such a plan implemented, the future revenues to be collected under the system can be calculated and capital construction and subsidy programs could be started based on future anticipated revenues. Federal programs in research and development, to subsidize the purchase of buses, to subsidize fares on existing mass transit systems, and to speed the construction of proposed mass transit systems could be implemented immediately. In the longer run other forms of transportation and communication which would maintain healthy and vital movement of people, goods, services and information could be encouraged.

        

The problem, however, is how to evaluate what kinds of changes will assure the vital exchange necessary for a healthy society. In other words, how do we determine what kinds of changes are desirable and what kinds of changes are not desirable?

8. THE USE OF THEORY IN THE FUTURE    

I would propose that any change which increases the exchange of information, that is, which is anti-entropic in nature, while at the same time decreasing the consumption of energy, is desirable. This of course implies replacing physical transportation wherever possible with electronic communication. Further analysis will have to be made to determine the value in economic activity of alternative possibilities in transportation and communication. As we learn more about the relationship of economic distribution and concentration to cultural, social, and political health and stability, we will have further criteria for choosing systems which will encourage desirable economic consequences.

Also as we come to understand information flow as an anti-entropic activity, we can better see how increases in all kinds of information flow will be culturally and socially healthy.

        

With he theoretical tools described in this paper it will also become possible to analyze how alternative new forms will affect us culturally. Which will encourage the positive values of urbanization? Which the negative? What will the effects of different systems be on family structures? What kinds of alternatives to the family will be promoted by which systems?

9. SUMMARY

This paper outlines a comprehensive approach to a theory of transportation and communication. It defines transportation an anti-entropic activity, it sees the identity of transportation and communication in information theory, and it proposes that analysis of the psychological, social, and cultural impact of a system, as well as an analysis of its direct and indirect functions and consequences, be the framework for such a theory. In the face of the kinds of economic, energy, social, and urban problems this country now has, the development of such a theory into a working tool for use in all of the planning-related professions (engineering, city planning, architecture, economics, sociology, politics, etc.) should be a high priority.

1. Entropy is an extremely complex subject but the more you look into it the more you will find its usefulness in analyzing transportation problems.

2. One of the concepts derived from information theory is redundancy. Redundancy is the duplication of capacity in a system so that the message gets through despite the interference of "noise". We can see the importance of redundancy in a city like New York when the roads are able to take over during a subway strike, or the subways during a taxi strike.

3. This kind of analysis can be done with rigorous mathematics using entropy models. There are people around the country making such models. A group of students at Pratt several years ago coined the term "eco-dollar" to measure the total economic and social impact of moving goods, services, and information.

4. The dial-a-bus system of course cannot operate outside a defined community. The kind of automated highway I am referring to here would be of the Starrcar type, where the cars can get off of the highway and run on their own power.

5. A case in point is BART which, despite its logical advantages, does not attract those motorists who prefer the privacy of their own cars.

6. The hand-held calculator/computer acts as a mirror to the mind. If children's minds develop while constantly being reflected in a mirror, there will be an effect analogous to that of growing up with a physical mirror as opposed to growing up with no mirrors.

7. Of course this is only brief outline. In a longer work many more concepts could be introduced, such as compatibility. Compatibility is the relationship of any proposed new system to existing systems.

One of the concepts derived from information theory is redundancy. Redundancy is the duplication of capacity in a system so that the message gets through despite the interference of "noise". We can see the importance of redundancy in a city like New York when the roads are able to take over during a subway strike, or the subways during a taxi strike.

This kind of analysis can be done with rigorous mathematics using entropy models. There are people around the country making such models. A group of students at Pratt several years ago coined the term "eco-dollar" to measure the total economic and social impact of moving goods, services, and information.

The dial-a-bus system of course cannot operate outside a defined community. The kind of automated highway I am referring to here would be of the Starrcar type, where the cars can get off of the highway and run on their own power.

A case in point is BART which, despite its logical advantages, does not attract those motorists who prefer the privacy of their own cars.