Presumably this would mean all those born abroad to “ex pats” shouldn’t be allowed to either? Brit born abroad to a British father here, who moved back when I was barely 2. But I’m sure he doesn‘t mean folk like us… 🙄

I found Jay Winter’s “Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning” really interesting when I read it as part of my undergrad. Very moving.

Like any technology these robots make some things better, and other things worse. I'd reframe the issue to be more productive: it's obvious that these robots can't do stairs yet - so actually, making more accessible built environments would be good for these robots *and* disabled people.

That includes research where different groups including robot builders and disabled people worked together to address some of these problems: dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

And as I pointed out in my QT: there's already research about the impacts of these robots (and other forms of micro-mobility) on other users of public space including disabled people. Cynthia Bennett's paper was one of the early ones (dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...) but there is a lot more since then.

A key finding - apart from the fact that disabled people know more about what makes an environment accessible than most non-disabled people - is that loads of subtle socio-technical things (snow, ice, a late change-of-platform, broken lift, ramp-assist not arriving) can make or break a journey

I'd strongly advocate listening to disabled people and their knowledge, experience & expertise around what makes a space accessible/inaccessible. It's what I did during my PhD: theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle...

Disabled people have been documenting and trying to influence decision-makers to reduce barriers for many decades. Many have been addressed, but lots more still remain, and this is just another version of recurrent tech utopianism - "the new dynamic ramp/robot/thingamajig will fix that".

They might indeed, but that's a red herring when it comes to accessibility. Disabled people might also want (and have the right!) to get out. They face a lot of well-documented accessibility barriers, which these (and escooters/bikes) make worse, and most non-disabled people simply don't accept that

I'm a few days late to the thread, but so many replies to the OP entirely ignore disabled people's experiences of public space and the inaccessibility caused by things like this (and abandoned escooters/bikes).

Lots of research on this, e.g dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

Congratulations!

Or paid placement - this was my grumble yesterday:

bsky.app/profile/sdvr...

As someone who did a PhD partly in an HCI research group (and whose thesis drew on STS) I’m somewhat astounded by the apparent bubble in which this research seems to be happening. Even within CS, HCI and its insights jave been around for many decades!

This is a really clear and impressive bit of communication. I'm somewhat baffled that it's needed - by the fact that Frontier AI research is so disconnected from real life as to need the concept of "to a man with a hammer, everything looking like a nail" explaining - but Toner does it v well

what I find fascinating is how Toner gets there and how she unpacks it. For anyone working in foresight, the idea that future events can't be controlled or predicted is obvious, but it's clearly not obvious at all to her audience or to her community of practice. To put it another way, life is messy

The part that's most interesting to me is where she uses an eg from fluid mechanics to bring to light the concept that the future is not certain and progress isn't linear - that contradictory events can take place at the same time. Any sociotechnical researcher will say "Well duh" about this but...

A long time ago, I wrote a masters thesis on the Vietnam Syndrome and Reagan‘s foreign policy. Far from “banishing” the syndrome, he adhered to it - not intervening unless likelihood of US mass casualties minimal (ie Grenada invasion yes; bombing Libya yes; boots on ground in Nicaragua no). similar?

Living elsewhere in greater Manchester and having visited only once (very briefly), I agree. I definitely want to go back at some point, the old part of the town centre is really cute

No problem! I meant to add, if you’ve got an Amex card, they regularly have offers on. Currently I’m seeing £50 off £115 spend by 31st Dec on my Amex, and the Economist half-price offer is £119.50 for the first year. So combining the two it is just under £70 for a year which is pretty decent!