Historical Fundaments of the Mobile Society: Path (Inter-) Dependencies in Traffic Management and Information Systems

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The modern Europeans are mobile: they use different modes of transport to reach the most diverse destinations, use their mobile phones and communicate and obtain information whenever and wherever it is necessary or possible. Intermodal transport systems make even the most remote places accessible at any time, similar to one’s own local environment, and enable global connectivity even with distant production sites and trading centers. At the same time, the mobile Europeans are experiencing their immobility every day – whether caused by traffic jams or traffic disruptions. Reducing immobility, therefore, has been a central scientific and social challenge since the beginning of mass mobility in the 1960s. Traffic management and information systems in cars and ships, for whose operation broadcasters, policy makers, engineers and traffic scientists work closely together, are designed to improve and optimize traffic flows and rhythms. These systems, such as traffic radio, the Traffic Message Channel or radiotelephone services on inland waterways, are all the results of (interdependent) long-term technological, institutional and media developments. The project will investigate the operating conditions of mobile societies by focusing on path (inter-)dependencies in the development of traffic management and information systems from the 1980s onward. Such systems offer an excellent opportunity to analyze the mobile society because modern transport systems are a way of life which has redefined ‘movement’ in the history of mankind. They are a symbol of the mobile societies’ tensions between mobility and immobility. A set of interrelated questions guides the project: How does the mobile society work? How can we explain mobilities and immobilities on the mobile societies’ transport networks? How are sociotechnical systems for a mass mobile society planned, designed and implemented? What were the reasons for a realization or non-realization of traffic management and information systems and some of its components? How do different technical, institutional and medial components match each other? Using a novel model of path (inter-)dependencies, which interrelates technical, institutional and medial paths, will enable us to understand the underlying logics of the mobile society. It will demonstrate the complex interactions of institutional, technical and medial components in the historical development of the mobile societies’ and its attempts at managing mobilities and immobilities on the transport networks (road and inland navigation). The results of the project will be summarized in a monograph.