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Almost as soon as technologists invent robots carry groceries or burritos Discussions began at people’s doors, over the sidewalks.

Officials in San Francisco, the test lab for many new technologies, anxious He said that interacting with robots could harm older people, children or the disabled. About a year ago, Pennsylvania swayed city-by-city restrictions and delivered delivery robots that pounced on the sidewalk that looked like wheeled beer coolers. same rights as pedestrians. Officials in Kirkland, Washington, recently pending permissions He asks whether Amazon should pay fees for its experimental package delivery robots and for using the pavement area.

It may seem ridiculous to devote brain space and government attention to robot couriers. may never be possible outside of limited settings like college campuses or city centres. And go ahead and roll your eyes in left-leaning cities like San Francisco that seem obsessed with rules.

But these robot wars are a microcosm of big questions about technology and modern life. How do we share public spaces such as streets and sidewalks – and who is responsible for the inevitable harms from changing our communities, including safety threats, wear and tear of roads and sidewalks, congestion and pollution?

When did versions of these questions appear? e-commerce deliveries explodeand they occur when it makes room for locales. dining outdoors, cycling, ride services such as Uber, Walk, buses, driverless cars, electric scooter or flying taxis. These are all flavors of the same disagreement over who belongs to our shared spaces and who doesn’t, and who deserves a more or less limited resource.

“For 100 years, all kinds of things have happened on our roads, on our streets, on our sidewalks, where we didn’t know exactly what to do,” he said. Bryant Walker SmithHe’s a professor at the University of South Carolina law school who studies emerging transportation. He pointed out that there was a time when cars were the new and contentious intruders on the road.

Smith acknowledged that there is no simple answer to who and what belongs on our streets and sidewalks.

Not allowing the public sphere to flourish is self-defeating. We may miss beneficial changes to be made in our homelands or better ways to move people and goods. But at the same time, allowing a free-for-all system like delivery trucks is potentially destructive. walking around the neighborhoodsgolf carts on highways or seas of cars and scooters blocking every road.

Smith said it’s okay for different communities to make their own choices about pavement robots, bike paths or equestrian services. clumsy the lack of a one-size-fits-all plan for how to deal with these kinds of things. He said that universities, which until now have been the home of robot couriers, have the authority to set rules such as speed and weight limits and keep courier companies on their promises.

“We need to ask the authorities and all of us what we want for our communities,” he said, and then imagine how we want the public space to serve those goals. This means not seeing robot couriers, electric scooters, private cars or UPS trucks as separate modes of transport, but thinking broadly about the uses of roads and sidewalks.

Most of all, people and policymakers need to not only think about what to do about new modes of transportation, but also be willing to re-imagine the status quo of cars and trucks, Smith said. dominant users of public spaceeverything and everyone is competing for the edges of streets and sidewalks.

Due to the high costs that vehicles impose on communities, such as traffic jams, road deaths, climate change and physical space demandsWe might need to get more creative with making room for everything but cars, Smith said. “Let’s encourage diversity and see what happens,” he said.

This will be messy and contentious, but as Smith said, that’s how change works.

For more reading on emerging transport: (These may require a subscription.)

Before you go …

• Israeli government requests denied using a controversial digital espionage technology from Ukraine and Estonia in recent years He called Pegasus to hack Russian phones. My colleagues Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti reported that they were concerned about damaging Israel’s relationship with the Kremlin.

  For more information about Pegasus, Read this investigation from January.

• He is an English teenager: cyber security researchers Identified a 16-year-old They said they spearheaded a series of computer attacks against tech companies, including Microsoft and computer chip company Nvidia, Bloomberg News reported. (Subscription may be required.)

• A moment of peace in a war over apps: People using Spotify’s Android app will soon have side-by-side options to pay for a music subscription via Google’s or Spotify’s payment system. My Colleague Dai Wakabayashi explains Why is this tweak an intriguing moment in the global quest to take control of apps from Google and Apple?

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i like to read this Twitter thread Animal researchers discussing a fox, frog, tarantula and other research subjects that barely move from the same spot when their movements are tracked.