THE END OF FOOTPATHS
The story of walking is the story of tools. And the story of tools is the story of their evolution. At one end is the tool-less hominid who just learned how to walk: barefoot, nude, nothing to protect herself from the elements. On this barest of walkers, the walker is a body - supple and sensitive - yet directly interacting with the world. The body moves through the world through the act of walking and the body makes the world as the world makes the body. Footprints make a footpath in the middle of a forest, a footpath shared by all other walkers.
At the end of this “evolution” is the passenger of a self-driving automobile. Here, the body, though still supple and sensitive, makes not a single dent on the world. It ceases to have any influence on the world as is the world on it. The body becomes a passive spectator, its functions replaced by a tool - the self-driving automobile that does everything a walker does (move from one place to another and “think” how this movement should be accomplished). The automobile moves; the body travels. And here, at the end of this evolution, is the end of footpaths. Because when tools evolve in sophistication, they replace the body they augment. Tools, not bodies, begin to shape the world. The world becomes a world of self-driving cars: isolation cells that separate bodies from each other all in their way to perdition.