We’re awful at naming new technologies

yet we still try to get it right, even when we don’t have to.

This morning you may have spent some time in your road machine, and stuck in traffic you listened to the wireless as commuters yawned in their automotor horses beside you, or parents seated their children into quadricyles to get them to school. Now you’re asking: what am I going on about? Try and Backrub the words above. The truth is, time and time again, finding the right name for emerging technologies has proven to be a bit challenging. (Oh yes, this happens with brand names too!)

The terms listed above are early names for what we now call an automobile or car, while the better-known wireless was used to denote radio devices. But what makes naming new technologies so difficult? Well early on, people often don’t actually know what they’re naming…

One of the most common methods of gaining a better understanding of previously unknown phenomena is comparing these to what is known. Dumbing down the philosophy behind this: something new has to be familiar enough to enable interpretation. Something completely novel and truly unlike anything else within our knowledge base is virtually incomprehensible.
It’s similar to learning a new language. At first, everything is gibberish, a meaningless sequence of sounds. Then as the first words glean meaning and you develop a more in-depth knowledge of the system you are able to extrapolate on your existing knowledge to understand sentences with unknown words for example.

The known is a base to which we either metonymically or metaphorically attach our new phenomenon. Then we add words (or AdWords…) to differentiate the new technology from the original. Somewhere along the line, someone will turn to ancient Greek or Latin, and things get crazy. Right, oleo locomotive? (Oleo, Latin for oil, and locomotive as in, well, locomotive, from the Latin locus and motivus)

Self-driving autonomous driverless automated robo-cars — say what?

Don’t worry, no one actually says that. Nevertheless, in recent years, technologies around the automation of driving tasks have garnered what seems like an endless list of names. The most popular:

• self-driving cars
• autonomous vehicles
• driverless cars
• robot cars (including robo-car, robotaxi, etc.)

The problem? When you take a closer look at them, none of these get it right.

Do cars drive themselves? Currently no. The term ‘self-driving’ would only apply to L4 and L5 on the SAE scale. But because it’s been so widely used over the past years the use of the terms ‘fully/truly self-driving car’ is becoming alarmingly widespread. So we’re saying that something is something but it’s not actually something…

We see the same problem with autonomous vehicles. It’s a limiting term for the upper reaches of technology. It’s also a bit clunky. The words autonomy and vehicles fall just outside the bounds of everyday English. Traditionally, autonomy was used to describe self-governance or freedom. And, to be honest, I’d rather tell my car where to go, than give it free will to take me anywhere! (Actually, not a bad holiday idea, anyone up for a road trip?)

Don’t use the term driverless in the proximity of an engineer, or lawyer (I learned that the hard way). A driverless vehicle is a stationary one. There’s always someone in the driver’s seat, whether it’s you, me, or a set of complex algorithms and a high-performance computer. Liability is actually one of the core regulatory questions surrounding automated driving technologies, and this _per defitionem_ requires that the person (or, in the future, system) in charge of the vehicle be identifiable.

Personally, I’ve always felt that the users of the term robo-car are secretly waiting for self-driving patrol cars they can call robo-cops. Cheap puns aside, the term is catchy but does little to describe the technology. The term is extremely broad and slightly generic. Any programmable machine can be considered a robot.

How do we get it, right?

My favorite term might be autonomous automobiles or auto autos. Not only is it a figura etymologica, it means self-governing self-mover, or similar. (Sorry…)

The absurd example is a case in point: We don’t get it right.
László, our CEO, has written numerous blogs recently about how consolidation is coming to the automated driving industry. There are too many players in a field now recognizing the technology is not developing as quickly as believed. With fewer resources to go around, companies will be acquired or disappear. The survivors will be those with the most meaningful partnerships.

Language tends to work in similar ways. As new technologies emerge, several names jostle for position and try to rule the scene — and the hype. Everyone will come up with different names to describe it, and associate based on their personal preferences. Then as the tech matures, most of these will fall into disuse. The words with the most influential users will gain the most traction, or something new may be born of the chaos. Language tends towards economy; this means descriptive structures may be at a disadvantage.

Language has several solutions to this. We take brand names and turn them into common nouns (e.g. hoover, a.k.a vacuum cleaner). We take the name of something else and expand it to encompass the new phenomenon (e.g. leaf, leaf or a tree, to leaf as in single page of a book, or a leaf of medicine), or a different characteristic is brought to the fore (wireless → radio) to mention only a few.

For the wait…

So having determined that we get it wrong but can’t get it right, what do we do? We describe as closely as possible the current state of the technology, taking several aspects into account.

Hence the phrase automated driving, or driving automation.

It’s a bit bland but it is what we’re working on. Automation does not limit the phrase to the higher levels of the SAE scale, nor does it remove the driver from the vehicle. If anything the term accentuates that humans created the technology. Machines are automated by humans to make our lives easier, more comfortable and safer. Currently, that’s what this technology is doing.

Welcome to the brave age of the automated vehicle.