Automatic Transportation 

Don Ivan Punchatz, an American artist, painted this vision of the future in which cars are fully automated. In the context of accelerating automation in the United States, the painting proposes a future in which people have ample free time, even while traveling. The figures in the foreground play chess, a game of intellectual skill, as they are chauffeured through a pastoral, suburban landscape. Other people are at leisure too. The picture implies a world in which capitalism has solved the problem of scarcity, and a robust social welfare system has allowed the population to develop interests outside of work. Of course, such a future depends on specific political choices. Punchatz's painting invites us to imagine what those might be, and the social conditions that would bring them about. As historians, we might look to publications like the Whole Earth Catalog, manifestos like the Port Huron Statement, or the writings of social critics like Ivan Illich to understand where Punchatz's utopian imagery comes from.