CARS AS HEROES: TRANSFORMING TO THE NEXT STEP REALITY VIA AUTONOMOUS CARS

: The beginning of modern mankind is usually connected to the invention of the wheel making mobility possible. Men always wanted to be mobile through the vehicles of different kinds. Throughout time, cars became not only a means of simple transportation but a sign of hope, a symbol of status, a proof of richness etc. Different types, colors and styles were produced, and a competition occurred among the car producers to develop talented cars as well as its advertisements. In these ones, not only the car itself but also the users of such heroic cars were promoted as outstanding personalities. These unique characters had a certain charm and convincing power on the ordinary ones. Thus, how the advertisements of these new trends effect the new models and the desires of the mobility is another question to be analyzed. The use of the automobiles within the films, made some models and some styles very famous and created trends touching the mind or heart of the people. Some of these “automatic heroes” are discussed in t his article. The paper aims to analyze how these autonomous cars are introduced to the masses, imposing premises and benefits, etc. through advertisement. It also aims to collect data regarding the audience impact and consumer expectations as to be compared and contrasted with the traditional cars. The main question of the paper is to find out how far the autonomous cars would be changing driving and communication skills etc. The statistical information to be reached through the data analysis would provide us the path to see how the autonomous cars would be welcomed in Turkey in near future.


Introduction
A few years ago, the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, a British-Canadian journalist was one of the bestsellers and it was describing a car salesman, Bob Golomb, with sales numbers over twice that of the average car salesperson. This is one of the thousands of examples of how people give importance to cars (Gladwell, 2017). Cars and any kind of action related to them are marvelous. Seeing them, testing them, driving them, buying or selling them have always been great experiences. Once they are in the common place, in front of the eyes of the others, they mean even more. That means the individual satisfaction turns to be a bit more when the others are included. In this case, the news about the cars, the films about the cars and even the ones containing a different unique car model are always hit ones.
During the days of scarcity, when it was almost impossible for the ordinary people to touch a car, the dream of a car was more important. Perhaps that's why in many films, cars are were shown in proud and sometimes they were starring. Becoming almost as much famous as the leading actor, these automobiles have a place in the hearts of the audiences as well as the seeds of a future purchase according to Gerbner's cultivation theory (Gerbner, 1998). These mechanic heroes sometimes sacrificed themselves for the sake of art by jumping from the cliff; sometimes they turn to be robots converted from a car to save the world. Throughout the history of cinema, we come across with the cars inevitably especially almost all the action movies should have a car crash or run away and chase scenes.
By the 1950s, Friedson (1953) was the first to argue that people attended movies, listened to the radio, and watched television within an interpersonal context thus, "the concept of mass is not applicable to the audience". Many other researchers have supported this idea (i.e. Bauer, 1960) and stated that advertisements have more appeal on individuals and groups. Today, we know that being exposed to messages especially the visuals are important. When we have a look at the films using cars, we see that their box offices are also very high. So, using a car in a film, in a way guarantees the box office rates, at least it was so in the earlier times. When we have a look at the films using different types of cars in each film, it's of course not possible to argue that all cars are famous or any car could become better box offices. Some films are just the serials and the following figures representing the box offices refer to the serials and their total box office throughout the years. Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) The Italian Job (1969) American Graffiti (1973) The Blues Brothers (1980) Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) Bullitt (1968) Christine (1983) Le Mans (1971) Box Office Rates of The Films Using Cars Figure 1: Box Office Rates of The Films Using Unforgettable Cars (Source: Gathered from the https://www.boxofficemojo.com/ by Nilüfer Pembecioğlu) Looking at the use of the cars in the films, it would be easy to see that most of the Box Office rates refer to the nostalgic use of old models. This is rather related with the main character in the film or actions referring to the plot. In fact, anything could cause nostalgia, especially if you have a strong connection with it in the past. The cars in the films could bring out pleasant memories from the past. Even if there is a tiny sense of loss due to accidents or crashes, usually, the overall feeling is happiness and sense of belonging to something or sometime, nostalgia. Associated with the concept of car, it would be possible that the audience purchasing for the film at the moment, perhaps were having experiences with the same car in the past: a familiar look, a sign from the childhood, a similar memory, having a special symbol. Looking at the first drawings of a child, it's possible to see how willingly they are into the subject.
What a child can do using his motor and coordination skills develops over time: for example, children have the ability to swim from the moment they are born. Nevertheless, in the case of learning skills, the balance posture is a skill acquired at an early age. Balance in the ground and in water require different motor skills thus, children's ability to gain balance in the water occurs between the age of 4-5. However, from the age of 2 they can turn their observations into actions for basic cooking skills.
Almost every child's dreams of mobility start with the bicycle. The cycling skill gained between the ages of 3-8 can be realized in two stages, first as a tricycle and then as a two-wheeler. The development of other daily life skills such as brushing teeth and tying shoelaces might occur between 6-8 years. However, a child can hold a pencil starting at the age of two, paint pre-defined pictures, and make their own pictures after the age of three. Although the first paintings of children are primarily garbage men, houses and nature paintings, automobiles are added to their drawings around 5 years old. The small car toys for the child are provided by the parents first and demanded by the child later. These mini cars and similarly the bumper cars of amusement parks help to develop the image of independence and mobility.
Although it is known that the child's ability to use a map and move from place to place by public transport alone is known to develop between the ages of 6 and 13, it can vary from culture to culture. For example, in the Netherlands, kindergarten students can go to school on their own bikes. Similarly, Japanese students use public transport on their own at the age of six or seven. In the United States, parents are divided into those who advocate that thirteen-year-olds do not wait for a single bus at the bus stop and allow their nine-year-old to travel alone on the New York subway. Regarding the mobility of the children, according to www.saferoutesinfo.org, it is not generally safe for children to cross the road alone until they are ten years old.
Upon establishing their relationship with money in real life around the age of 6, the children dream of the things they might buy in future. And of course, cars stand in the first row of the list. Even as early as 1977, Szybillo & Sosanie stated that children are getting a bigger say in the family's important expenses such as houses, cars, holiday or household goods.
As cited in Gündüz & Pembecioğlu (2016) toy-related development in the United States followed the repeal of rules regarding the distinction between advertisements and regular shows, and toy producers rushed to have their products turned into movie characters. Kapferer states that when it was found that use of cartoon characters in advertising has adverse effects on children, advertisements in the form of animated movies were banned (Kapferer, 1985: 87), and advertisers moved on to try other ideas.
A car is usually a symbol for children affecting a part or their childhood that establishes a strong connection. That's why most of the people think of the cars as the main part of the film experience. The films making use of famous cars in their plot, make use of old cars in general reaching to 72% of the whole. The use of new cars reaches up to 28% especially when the plot is mainly structured on the future. The audience usually develop a kind of appetite for such new and futuristic designs as well, whereas the old cars might only trigger the appetite of the collectors.
For example, for The Fast and The Furious series of seven films hundreds of cars are wasted. Produced by W Motors 'Lycan Hypersport' alone for $ 3.4 million price per ride seem to be the most expensive car. In the last film of the series, the orange Lamborghini Murcielago, the 1968 model Dodge Ice Charger (9 of these were used in the film) were used. Again, as in the previous series Mercedes, Bentley, Jaguar brands produced supermodels. The Fate of the Furios, the 8th of the 'Fast and the Furious' series, total 8 films with a $ 1 billion construction budget have already gained close to 5 billion dollars in box office revenues so far. The Box Office of the series is expected to reach 6 billion dollars with the last film with the highest budget of 250 million dollars. Throughout the series, except for the last film, 169 standard vehicles were damaged in total, 142 standard, 37 special cars pert, 53 buildings were damaged, 31 buildings were  Not only the films but also the news about the cars and the new developments also appeal to the audience a lot. In 1989 newspapers published, a tiny little piece of news announcing that three lunar automobiles are for sale. Associated Press was the source of the news and these three lunar vehicles were still on the moon waiting for their new drivers. Even if they might be requiring perhaps some little push these three cars that have not been much used for about 20 years. But if the Moon's low gravitational power is considered it will not be that difficult to make them run.
The vehicles were from the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 voyages carried out to moon by 1971-1972. They were produced in the United States Department of Aeronautics and Space, costing each 22 billion dollars these vehicles were used by astronauts on lunar exploration. Neil Cowart, the chief engineer of the crew, then working for the Boeing Company stated that hearing about President Bush talking about renewing the space researches, he remembered these LRV's on the moon. Cowart said, "Ten years have passed, but I believe the most of the pieces are in good condition." After Apollo flights, these Moon modules became abandoned vehicles with several cameras on the surface of the Moon. The news ends with an invitation for those who would like to buy one, to the Smithsonian Space and Aviation Museum in Washington since the fourth vehicle produced under the same project is exhibited there as well. No need to mention that anyone might be able to visit the museum for a single dollar. We do not know how many visitors visited the museum for checking this LVR's but it was a good method of selling dreams for mass audiences.
Such little media tricks might not be important if only we do not have the serial 'Star Trek'. Starting as early as the 'Star Trek' series the mobility caused the human being to change all the expectations, life style and other aspects of life. In Star Trek, mobility was possible not only in the world but in space, even from one world to another. Motivating the people to the space research and convincing them for its possibility the serial was responsible. Regarding the technological developments, this was not somewhat new compared to the steam boats and the coal engines, merchandize and the trains to mobilize the human. The spaceship connection as well as the 'Back To The Future' exemplifies the ideas such as DeLorean designed for the film and later on became 'real' via the locomotive at the end of the film. It is unavoidable for the individuals to keep themselves out of the wave while all the betterment is on its way and huge masses were affected highly.
1968's Herbie the Love Bug of the sentimental era was a Volkswagen character created by Walt Disney who has a mind of his own and is capable of driving himself, and is also a serious contender in auto racing competitions, even though people looked at him as a humorous character rather than a hero. By the years 1985 the serial Knight Rider was very famous not only in Turkey but all around the world. Instead of the superheroes of the other films this was introducing a car as a mechanical hero, in the form of an autonomous car capable of doing even better than the spaceships could do in those years. This serial proved that it was not humour or sentimentalism the people are after but logic and power.
Nowadays all the prominent brands are almost ready to change the currency of mobility, as technology forced people to change media systems with the introduction of HD later leading to high sensors with 4K cameras. The upcoming system is introducing the autonomous cars and the brand new advertisements of this new pioneer technology had its bombardments.
Freeing himself from the limitations, mankind always was after the better and more effective. Yet, instead of improving the skills on the way of the betterment, the men were always on the cheating side as to improve the tools. Dreams sometimes come true throughout time such as the zeppelins, airbuses or titanic like transatlantic of 1930s carrying masses from one continent to the other. However, the 'autonomous cars' of the nowadays are almost ready for the individuals.
An ordinary checking in google provides 111,000,000 results and checking the term "Autonomous Cars" in scholar.google.com.tr we have more than 16700 scholarly articles. In YouTube around 1.480.000 results appear. In other e-libraries we have tones of articles and on newspapers and social media loads of entries. These are all for what they call now "smart car", "autonomous car" or "driverless car", "self-driving car". Related search could also provide sub titles such as lidar system, driver, parking, steering, path planning, obstacle detection, motion planning, trajectory planning, sensor fusion, etc. all the terminology you might need for the upcoming future. It is another huge load of information when it comes to Google Scholar. Check by the date, it would be easy to see that more than four thousand academic papers were evaluated and enlightened the concept of autonomous cars, mostly in the last decade. It's just queer to see that most of them are the products mainly of the last two decades and between 1960-1980 there seems to be only three articles, between 1980-1990 produced another three. The topic did not become hot even up to 1990-2000 cluster. There were only 28 articles published in that time cluster. Yet, the next decade brought about 400 hundred and the rest.
In the context of digitized world, communication systems, individuals and societies are more focused on digital literacy skills, and more information is produced and consumed in less time. Starting from very early ages, mobility was very important for the human being. Perhaps that's why the invention of the wheel was somewhat the most important invention allowing the mobility of the goods and human beings. Actually, as explained in many books and papers, being a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle bearing, wheels allow heavy objects to be moved easily facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Later on, wheels were also used for other purposes, such as a ship's wheel, steering wheel, potter's wheel and flywheel (https://www.slideshare.net/deepakchayal/invention-of-wheel). The transportation of the goods and people made the World a very different one. Combined with the other innovations and discoveries the World changed a lot. Even if the concept of mobility brings a kind of childish joy to all, it is a kind of transformation effecting not only children and but also the adults. Whereas the children love mobility through swinging, seesaw and with the toys including pseudo bicycles and cars of the childhood, the adults tend to be more "happy" when they pamper themselves like a child with the richness of a car. One cannot deny the influence of the media when mobility is involved. Regarding mobility on its intellectual basis, one could easily be mobilized via reading a book, a poem or a film, etc. providing a kind of inspiration for the present situation. If not physically, the individuals or groups at least intellectually could move from one perspective to another.

Aims and Methodology
In this framework, on the basis of this research, this paper aims to search the approaches to the concepts of mobility and ends up with the popular term of "autonomous car" to present how this new concept is covered in the latest media and how it aims to shape the lives of the societies. The paper aims to analyze how these autonomous cars are introduced to the masses, imposing premises, and benefits, etc. through advertisement. It also aims to collect data regarding the audience's impact and consumer expectations as to be compared and contrasted with traditional cars. The main question of the paper is to find out how far the autonomous cars would be changing driving and communication skills etc. The statistical information to be reached through the data analysis would provide us the path to see how autonomous cars would be welcomed in near future. The paper is aiming to present the way, how step-by-step humanity is presented to the concept and use of autonomous cars.

Findings and Interpretations
Media is a tool to motivate and conduct the masses. Even if it gets more and more individualized the recent and new media became more interactive as to include the hobbies and interests of the individuals dwelling on more thematic marketing approaches to sell better. As the industry grow faster there appeared the concepts of new advertising styles. Ranging from the common audience to the groups and individuals, nowadays, the niche audiences are more popular than anything else.
The old traditions of dwelling more on the masses, keeping in mind that the advertisements should appeal to the mass audiences is almost dead in the modern world. Instead they prefer to focus more on the needs of the niche audiences as to appeal to the hopes and desires of the individuals or smaller groups. This is perhaps due to the shift of the medium, changing its heavy use of traditional mass media to disseminate ads widely to the practical use of social media-social networking via sites, blogs, video and photo sharing, chat rooms, message boards, listservs, wikis, social bookmarking and mobile applications. It could also be possible through the aim of gaining more attention of the most interested groups, relying on more delivering interesting content just in the right moment the target needs it. It might even be the fact that instead of the few subscribers of the old magazines, now the tones of followers provide the signals of the possible attention for the new remarks. These new types of audiences make the messages flow immediately as they appear in the media. Mostly people are highly interactive across networks of consumers; companies interject themselves into these networks to befriend consumers, listen to their needs, and influence them in conversations. That seems to be the easy way to have an influence on the consumers and play with their perceptions. They believe that it's easy to convince the people to do something or to buy a certain product. That means, any product could be reached within minutes and audience reflections count more than the ones in the past since these new advertising styles focusing on selling products in ad campaigns that had less and a limited life cycle. That means these ads focus on communicating with potential customers in an ongoing dialogue even before the product appears.
Advertisements have more appeal on the individuals and groups than we might imagine. However, it's not the only factor. The psychology of the individual, identifying the self with the actor in the visual is also a part of the story affecting the sales of the products. This identification and modelling behavior make it all possible to sell the goods, whatever they are. Sometimes, when the purchased amount is high, the satisfaction becomes higher. It is a well-known fact that people are sacrificing for the things they love, and they love being involved in their dreams. That's why media is much more focusing on selling the dreams in general. That means, for example, via the playstations, computer games people tend to practice their driving skills, but they were enjoying the abnormal typologies from the very beginning.
Going back as to remember how the traditional media had an impact on the dreams of the people with the TV serials the traces could be followed. Watching serials like "Star Trek" one may possibly see both the isolation of the self and enrichment of the society together. In each new episode coming across with the different faces and characteristic qualities of the participating crew.

Star Trek
Widely known as 'Star Trek' the serial was kind of phenomenon leading to economic, social and scientific mobility of the societies. Even if the original series dating back as early as 1966-1969, upon the positive feedback from the audience, the follow up serials had a greater impact on the society with different sequels to the original series. Television days were providing an immediate effect of the serials since there was enough time between the episodes to think and to dream about the messages and scenes. The impact was of a twofold one, having a media impact on one hand and the creative ideas of the futuristic point of view on the other. In those years, the newspapers were also making use of enough news about the serials, triggering the attention of the general audience and those were the days when the people come together to sit in front of a single television set to watch these serials. So, it might be assumed that the impact of those serials was as powerful and durable as possible to cause people to think about a possible future.
Not only in a specific country but all over the world people loved these serials that's why they continued to the television serials in print media, including books, novels, comics and magazines carrying the theme. Between 1973 and 1974 there even appeared the animated series. It was the first striking point that made human beings understand that mobility is not only possible with cars but there could also be some other creative possibilities. However, apart from cars or space ships, the film perspective was more profitable due to the marketing to the masses and other countries. So, the idea did not only involve the television series in as next generation in 1987-1994and as Deep Space Nine in 1993-1999and Voyager in 1995-2001. Prequels to the original series were developed under the name of Enterprise by [2001][2002][2003][2004][2005]. It is interesting that the serials under the name of Discovery just started in 2017. Films were repetitive in their original series in 1979,1982,1984,1986,1989,1991 and called as next generation films by 1994,1996,1998,2002. Some of them turned to be the reboot films in 2009, 2013 and even in 2016. Marketing the idea was not only limited with the media. That's why a track could be seen in the boxes of games, theme parks or exhibits.
The reason why Star Trek became such a cult phenomenon for decades would be depending on the idea of mobility, futurity and ambiguity that mankind might come across. In the triangle of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the classical mythological storytelling was followed yet, as William Shatner points out: "There is a mythological component to pop culture], especially with science fiction. It's people looking for answers -and science fiction offers to explain the inexplicable, the same as religion tends to do... If we accept the premise that it has a mythological element, then all the stuff about going out into space and meeting new life -trying to explain it and put a human element to it -it's a hopeful vision. All these things offer hope and imaginative solutions for the future." (http://newsobserver.com/entertainment/artsculture/article13446413.html) The Star Trek media franchise became a multibillion-dollar industry, owned by CBS. Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek to NBC as a classic adventure drama. However, the storytelling was taking its roots from reality, changing it a bit and providing to the mystical one through a parallel and virtual reality -media (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/oral-history-star-trek-180958779/). No doubt the virtual one was having a higher impact than the reality due to the fact that it was mainly referring to the creativity part of the brain, easily convincing the individuals and societies to things that could happen. For example, the opening line "to boldly go where no man has gone before," was taken almost verbatim from a U.S. White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957.

Star
Trek is said to be caused people to develop a deeper interest for space and technology and once the seeds were put into the soil the innovative ideas flourished through the time. The idea of teleportation for example bringing out the depiction of "matter-energy transport", with the famously misquoted phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" in the serials. Stemming from the virtual reality, real expectations about life said to appear through these keenly watched episodes. To give another example, the space shuttle named after by NASA as the porotype space shuttle Enterprise. Most of the people concentrated on the technical innovations presented by the serials and some others commented more on the social justice, calm behaviors of the rangers, scientific approaches to the problems, debates, the diversity, democracy and communism type of unified objectives, uniformed clothes, etc. Through the introduction of the extraterrestrial in fact the serial emphasized the importance of rising awareness in the society, putting forward more humanistic touches such as understanding, empathy, sympathy, sacrifice. Widely known as 'Star Trek' the serial was kind of phenomenon leading to economic, social and scientific mobility of the societies. It's been over fifty years since Star Trek first aired, and since then it has literally formed its own universe -four spin-off series, nine feature films, thousands of conventions, and millions of books and all caused the human being change all the expectations, lifestyle and other aspects of life. As William Shatner points out; "All these things offer hope and imaginative solutions for the future" (McDonald, 2015). The serials were so important that the people started to call themselves "trekkies" or "trekkers". So, an entire subculture has grown up around. Regarding the USA of those years, the Star Trek contributed to the idea of mobility and space research.
As created during a time of national upheaval, Star Trek offered people a message of hope for the future. That message has produced a profound, life-affecting impact. It's been over forty years since Star Trek first aired, and since then it has literally formed its own universe -four spin-off series, nine feature films, thousands of conventions, and millions of books. Star Trek has become a worldwide phenomenon, but it means something different to everyone involved. In short, it could be assumed that starting by the 'Star Trek' the concept of mobility caused the human being to change all the expectations, lifestyle and other aspects of life. Regarding the technological developments and the concept of future, this was not somewhat new compared to the steamboats and the coal engines, merchandize and the trains to mobilize the human. The spaceship phantasy as well as the 'Back To The Future' exemplifies the ideas such as DeLorean designed for the film and later on became 'real' via the locomotive at the end of the film. It is unavoidable for the individuals to keep themselves out of the current while all the betterment is on its way and huge masses were affected highly.
Freeing himself from the limitations, mankind always was after the better and more effective. Yet, instead of improving the skills on the way of the betterment, the men were always on the cheating side as to improve the tools. Dreams sometimes come true

Herbie
Another media impact could also be verified through the films of Herbie the Love Bug. The films started by 1963 introducing an ordinary car, Volkswagen Beetle in the most extraordinary way, depicting the object as a sentimental human being. 1968's Herbie the Love Bug of the sentimental era was a Volkswagen character created by Walt Disney: It was car having a mind of his own and is capable of driving himself, and is also a serious contender in auto racing competitions, even though people looked at him as a humorous character rather than a hero. 1968's Herbie the Love Bug of the sentimental era was a Volkswagen character created by Walt Disney who has a mind of his own and is capable of driving himself, and is also a serious contender in auto racing competitions. Though people looked at him as a humorous character rather than a hero. Instead of the superheroes of the other films this was introducing us a mechanical hero, an autonomous car capable of doing even better than the spaceships could do in those years. This serial proved that it was not humor or sentimentalism the people are after but logic and power.
Another media impact could also be verified through the films of Herbie the Love Bug. The films started by 1963 introducing an ordinary car, Volkswagen Beetle in the most extraordinary way, depicting the object as a sentimental human being. The film seems to be so much successful that the same character starred in several different upcoming productions, creating a fun group and taking care of their own Beetles. The concept of an object having a mind of his own and capable of driving himself, functioning as a matchmaker and solving problems on its own way created "Herbie" as a distinguished identity. It remained similar in the films of Herbie Rides Again in 1974, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo 1977, Herbie Goes Bananas in 1980, The Love Bug in 1997 and Herbie: Fully Loaded in 2005 reaching a worldwide box Office of $280,639,816 dollars (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl358188545/). As is the case it turned to become a television series and was aired in 1982 on CBS in the form of five episodes later on to be re-edited to become another two-hour film, Herbie the Matchmaker.
Apart from its original films, Herbie too had many appearances in different countries such as Italian and German films and serials. People loved the idea of a selfgoing car, having emotions and an intuitive rationale. For example, even today the any YouTube page has a kind of nostalgic impact on around 55.000 fans (GTAIV Vehicle Review, 2014). Throughout these appearances the concept of Herbie was almost the same except some minor changes. People loved the idea of a self-going car, having emotions and an intuitive rationale. For example, even today the any YouTube page having a kind of nostalgic impact on around 55.000 fans (i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9BP4j1qXFE). The trick behind the Herbie was almost wholly depending on the humor and the technical substructure of the car. In those years where no mobile devices were functionally used different engine types and made modifications. For example, in the film "The Love Bug" it was equipped with a Porsche Super 90 engine and breaks and had modified transporter engines with big-bore cylinders and early type 3 dual-port heads and dual carbs. The horsepower of the cars in "Herbie: Fully Loaded" were ranging from 40 horsepower 1200cc engines to soaped up engines over 2000cc. In order to create the effect of Herbie driving himself, Disney concocted a detailed system of sprockets and pulleys connected to a second steering column under the front seat for a rear seat driver. There was also a second set of pedal assemblies, clutch cables and a shifter extension. In The Love Bug, the rear seat driver sat low enough to see over the windshield but still out of the view of the camera. For Herbie Rides Again and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Disney installed a hood-mounted Carello fog light that concealed a small camera which allowed the rear seat driver to view the street and sit lower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9BP4j1qXFE).

Knight Rider
By the year 1985, the serial Knight Rider was very famous all around the world. Instead of the superheroes of the other films, this was introducing a car as a mechanical hero, in the form of an autonomous car capable of doing even better than the spaceships could do in those years. This serial proved that it was not humor or sentimentalism the people are after but logic and power. Not too far from the concept of Herbie, the audience is introduced to a more modern shape with the "Knight Rider" series. By the years 1985 the serial Knight Rider was very famous not only in Turkey but all around the world. It was an American television series originally broadcasted on NBC from 1982 to 1986. The concept of artificial intelligent was imposed into a car which was also self-aware, hardworking, protective, dedicated and almost indestructible just like the owner Michael Knight. Depicting a super hero from the earlier series of The Six Million Dollar Man which started an appetite for science fiction and action television series aired in three pilot movies between 1973 and reached to its fifth season between 1974 and 1978 creating a kind of pop culture icon of the 1970's. Expanding the idea through the 'Bionic Woman' between 1976 and 1978 and featuring both male and female bionic characters between 1987 and 1994 had a great influence on the culture of those years. digital television series were included. As accustomed the theory behind the film turned to reality let it be the toys, games or vehicles.
A bit different from the humble and considerate Herbie, KITT was somewhat more matured and sophisticated. Apart from the crazy but sincere, ordinary, folk type of Herbie, KITT provides an elegant and chick point of view ready for challenges. It is interesting to note that in 2012 and 2013, General Electric ran an advertising campaign, "Brilliant Machines", about the coming generation of General Electric robotic devices. The campaign was built around famous robots from the movies and television, and KITT was prominently featured (Wei Wang, 2012). One ad showed KITT in Auto cruise mode racing a GE diesel-electric railroad engine hauling a freight train (Kevinfirebird24, 2012). Here we have the first glimpses of not only moving or talking cars but the cars with thinking and coordinating skills. The campaign was built around famous robots from the movies and television, and KITT was prominently featured (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNIyloRtdo). One ad showed KITT in Auto cruise mode racing a GE diesel-electric railroad engine hauling a freight train (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6tAgUcuNN0). Here we have the first glimpses of not only moving or talking cars but thinking skills to be improved not only for cars but for almost all the objects that could be imagined.

Autonomous Cars
After the invention of the first automobile by Karl Benz in 1885, the cars were thought to be the part of modern life and the most important thing up to the moment was how to renew it in case of an accident. Brands all over the world launched their campaign of producing autonomous cars by the year 2017 (Tasit.com, 2020). There seems to be more logical reasons behind the autonomous cars. Driverless vehicles, whose first attempts in the 1980s have been built, have developed rapidly in the last 10 years and the driverless vehicle technology that has been dreamed up for many years now goes into practice. In many parts of the world, driverless vehicles began traveling on their own. Uber's driverless throttle, Otto, managed to deliver a trillion of drinks to the warehouse by driving a distance of 200 kilometers. Google's driverless car fleet provided a total of 150,000 miles in California's streets. NuTonomy's robot trolley started serving in Singapore. Today, when 1.2 million people lose their lives in traffic accidents, the spread of driverless vehicles and the deaths of traffic accidents are expected to decline in a great deal.
There seems to be more logical reasons behind the autonomous cars. The insurance companies were delivering certain solutions for the possibilities for the car owners until the car producers decided to leave the least reliable part of the car, the driver. All the seat belts, airbags, automatic assistance systems perhaps were leading the way to self-driving cars. Today, 7 out of 10 cars are having their automatic transmission systems (Milliyet, 2020). When the number of people killed in the world's car accidents every year, reached 1.2 million people (In the USA around 33,000 people were killed) people thought of building better cars removing off the human factor. Because it was not the man-made cars causing car accidents but the man in general. However, the feeling of having a car motivates many people in a global sense. People needed more and more cars every day since it's a way of life, it's not a luxury anymore but rather a necessity. As Chris Urmson puts it people nowadays spend so much time traveling from one point to another and it costs more than they could imagine (Urmson, 2015). It's not the amount of time but all the effort and money as well as the negative moods it costs. That's why most of the automobile brands decided to be smart, effective, dependable and well-selling ones, sparing most of their budget for research and development. Mainly starting in 2000, the race started.
It is expected that less time will be lost in traffic thanks to the autonomous means that will change city life to a significant extent. In terms of driving efficiency, these vehicles, which are expected to perform better than humans, are also estimated to have a positive environmental impact, such as lower fuel consumption, a decrease in total carbon emissions and less pollution in the world. Starting by the 2000 almost all the automobile brands opened up a race for development of autonomous cars. For most of the improvements of the technology, the scientists claim that it was the people's pressure triggering the intensity of innovations. The rising life standards, the betterment of the Daily life conditions as well as the more conscious consumers the brands are forced to provide future premises to keep the target audience active. This was a similar thing when the first mobiles were introduced into the society and day by involving more icons in them helping the users in almost all aspects of life. Freeing the hands from the steering wheel was one of the main dreams of the human being. The automobile brands had proven that they really deserve that amount of money for a newly designed version helping people to understand and the respect of the substructure of a new design.
There seems to be too many automobile brands all over the world and most of them launched their campaign of producing autonomous cars by the year 2017. After the invention of the first automobile by Karl Benz in 1885, the cars were thought to be the part of a modern life and the most important thing up to the moment was how to renew it in case of an accident. The insurance companies were delivering certain solutions for the possibilities for the car owners until the car producers decided to leave the least reliable part of the car, the driver. All the seat belts, air bags, automatic assistance systems perhaps were leading the way to the self-driving cars. When the number of the people killed in the world's car accidents every year, reached to 1.2 million people (In USA around 33,000 people were killed) people thought of building better cars removing off the human factor. Because it was not the man made cars causing the car accidents but the man in general. However, people needed more and more cars every day since it's a way of life, it's not a luxury anymore but rather a necessity.
Looking back to those days the brands one by one mentioning the designs and new possibilities to be included into the upcoming next generation automobiles, each has a piece of hope scattered here and there in their web sites or ads. The testing drives were much more important than all specifically loaded with care and watched by outmost followers. Everyone started to believe that the better the technology gets the less reliable the driver is going to get. Because the more colorful and attractive the control panel gets, the more the drivers would be charmed. The mobile phone or computer itself or the upcoming call, the nasty driver behind or a nice music could change the mood of the driver whereas s/he has to be calm, steady, peaceful and careful every single second of the driving experience. However, the need to concentrate on the road or thinking about the past, present or future activities the mind might not be ready for that. That's why it seems to be a good idea to separate the driver from the car so that each could achieve their targets. As Urmson states (2015), it turns out that human drivers make mistakes that lead to traffic accidents about once every 100,000 miles in America. In contrast, a selfdriving system is probably making decisions about 10 times per second, so order of magnitude, that's about 1,000 times per mile.

Conclusion
Narratives have the power of shaping the life, expectations and attitudes. Spending their childhood with the narratives, involving car heroes like Herbie and KITT as well as many other remote-controlled toy cars, the audience is now prepared to dream more and more about the future to get ready for the autonomous cars. With this psychological, socioeconomic readiness, it is obvious that if only the smart cars appear, the first users would be the youngsters and elders due to their special needs. On the other hand, these seem to be too tasty to be true, just selling the dream rather than the objective itself, multiplying the similar messages, using all the transmedia strategies, with similar contents accompanied. Looking through the media, one can easily see how brands were working for autonomous cars, having their testing drives in closed areas under specified conditions, etc., news and ads never provide clues for the 'real' people to see the things with their eyes. In short that means they are selling the news at the moment rather than the car itself.
The main question here is: when cars start traveling on their own in five or ten years, do we really mind what the brand is? At the moment nobody bothers the brand of the airplanes, airlines or trains: if it's safe or not would be more important than the brand itself (Özpeynirci, 2016). However, this is not only related to the brands but also a kind of international war among the different geographies of the world.
The old and new media, newspapers, magazines are full of autonomous car information and promises. These new generation automobiles are considered to be just like a pet for a specific person, understanding his/her language, remembering preferences and obeying the circumstances provided. The uses of such cars would mainly be defined by their owner's needs and schedules. That's why the automobile brands tend to develop as many possibilities as they could to be able to meet the demands considering almost every individual. Old president of General Motors, Bob Lutz states that in long term, there would be no differences between the brands, whereas Mark Short, the automotive and transportation director of Ernst & Young insists on the upcoming development of new cars in almost ten years' time and the brands will be only a little image in the indoor furniture of the car (Coren, 2017).
Yet who is supporting them to develop the design, the software and digital substructure is the main problem. CEO of Volvo, Hakan Samuelsson provides two CARS AS HEROES: TRANSFORMING TO THE NEXT STEP REALITY VIA AUTONOMOUS CARS European Journal of Education Studies -Volume 7 │ Issue 12 │ 2020 68 solutions for the problem: Either they would be branding their own robot automobiles or they will be developing their own ones. According to Interbrand, compared with each other the fifteen top brands cost 256 billion dollars. Meaning "Bountiful rice field", Toyota costs more than all the rice in the world valuing all alone 53.6 billion dollars (Toyota, 2019). In conclusion, starting from the very beginning automobiles and automobile brands tried to position themselves as powerful with their technical skills. Starting with the call of Volkswagen "Looking for the drivers" up to the challenging invitation of Ford "Have you ever tried Ford!" and Mazda's "Zoom-Zoom" campaign all refers to the consumers, targeting and valuing them more than their products (https://www.toyota.com.tr/about/news_and_events/toyota-dunyanin-en-degerlimarkasi.json).
Having them all in the mind and searching for the media outcomes on the autonomous cars, what we see is somewhat surprising. On one hand we come across with the narratives, causing us to dream more and more about the future and position ourselves in it. These seem to be innocent enough just to lead us for a possible path, warning us for the upcoming calls of required budget or scattering around some hope for a better life. On the other hand, these seem to be too tasty to be true, just selling the dream rather than the objective itself, multiplying the similar messages in all the transmedia strategies, with similar content accompanied. Looking through the media, one can easily see how brands were working for autonomous cars, having their testing drives in closed areas under specified conditions, etc., these news never provide clues for the 'real' people to see the things in their eyes.
For example, one news states that one of the Volvo production autonomous cars, tested by Uber in Arizona has been involved in an accident and caused Uber to contributing to the project (http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/uberin-surucusuz-otomobilitrafik-kazasi-yapti-40407207). Uber was also in the court due to the stolen patents of Waymo.
Not only the social media accounts such as Facebook, twitter or Instagram are following such details but also the news channels such as Bloomberg. As if the brand is managed through the sensational news Uber was first blamed to misconduct the autonomous car passing through the red lights, a driver causing a little fight with a CEO and sexual harassment scandals. After all these mishappenings one might easily think if Uber is the right brand to develop such a sensitive apparat in the right way. As is the cause, Uber declared that they stopped developing autonomous cars.
When cars start travelling on their own in five or ten years, do we really mind if this is a BMW, Ford or Mercedes? At the moment we do not bother the brand of the airplanes, airlines or the trains and we just get in or get off. According to the people if it's safe or not would be more important than the brand itself (http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/robotlar-markalari-oldurecek-mi-40310762). However, it would be meaningless to have such a race if the brands wouldn't matter in future. It was a year ago that Uber declared the Volvo XC90 collaboration in San Francisco and competing with Google and Tesla.
It's a way behind when we compare more than a hundred years old sector competing with each other in all media channels to convince people that cars could really go all alone. Remembering that human being developed space ships to get to the moon and come back, this race seems to be for children only. However, this is not only related with the brands but also a kind of inter-national war in between the different geographies of the world. The old and new media, newspapers, magazines are full of autonomous car information. When the new models are considered, people never talk about the brands or new features added to the present models now. They are looking for somewhat really different bringing them the outmost comfort and relaxation, forgetting about all their skills of driving or finding easier ways to get to where they could travel. The specialists see that as a vulnerable threat. Even if we mentally get ready on coming across with the cars used by robots nothing could be as interesting as driving it yourself. On one hand, having different levels of tests to develop autonomous cars, the producers on the other hand developing different assumptions trying to estimate the values of the consumers and to guess what kind of special possible expectations they could have.
Since, it's no more designing better ones, these new generation automobiles would be just like a pet for a specific person, understanding his/her language and obeying the circumstances provided. The uses of such cars would mainly would be defined by their owner's needs and schedules. That's why the automobile brands tend to develop as many possibilities as they could to be able to meet the demands considering almost each individual. Old president of General Motors, Bob Lutz states that in long term there would be no differences between the brands, whereas Mark Short, the automotive and transportation director of Ernst & Young insists on the upcoming development of new cars in almost ten years' time and the brands will be only a little image in the indoor furniture of the car (https://qz.com/1122534/former-gm-chairman-bob-lutz-says-the-endof-the-car-industry-is-near/). The problem is not the brand of the automobile but rather who is supporting them to develop that design. This means that the brands would be just a kind of size or matter using certain systems. CEO of Volvo, Hakan Samuelsson provides Nilüfer Pembecioğlu, Uğur Gündüz CARS AS HEROES: TRANSFORMING TO THE NEXT STEP REALITY VIA AUTONOMOUS CARS European Journal of Education Studies -Volume 7 │ Issue 12 │ 2020 70 two solutions for the problem: Either they would be branding their own robot automobiles or they will be developing their own ones. The automatic pilot driving systems of automobiles operating in case of emergency could then make a difference of a ten thousand dollars of increase regarding the current increase in the price tag. A luxury automobile driver doesn't expect to have one to be directed but a leading one, that means a complete autonomous pilot automobile that one could just watch sitting at the back.
People are now looking for more comfort rather than using the car. They also expect to have online communication with their automobiles, coming and going and being when they're in need; and becoming invisible and silent when they are not needed. They do not want automobiles for mobility only but prestige, status symbol, and fantasy. With the impact of the previous media presenting cars creating enormous energy, motivation, and zest for life, they expect the same things from autonomous cars. However, recently this focus has changed and the automobiles themselves became the focus of attention with the concept of smart cars. Due to the power of being able to drive alone and risk-free, now they could attract the attention of more people including the ones without the driving licenses or skills, even the disabled ones. Depending upon the Pricewaterhouse Coopers' recent search, target audiences still stand for luxury and established brands when it comes to making preferences. One of the consultants, Evan Hirsh, states that one cares for the brand when there is no control over the driving action. Intel, one of the leading companies in the technology world, is also participating in a driverless car race with a large fleet. In March 2017, the Israel-based autonomous driving initiative, which bought MobilEye for $ 15.3 billion, announced that it would join with 100 vehicles for a driverless car race. Intel, which will be using MobilEye's autonomous driving technology in its automobiles, will not be depending on a single car brand when building its fleet. The 100-car fleet will be made up of different brands and models, and Intel announced that they will start testing at the end of 2017 (Budak, 2017). Automobiles to use MobilEye's sensing and mapping technologies will also have Intel's 5G and computing technologies and to Intel, driverless vehicles will have the autonomous driving capability at level 4 that is the second-highest level of autonomous driving. According to Shashua's statement, the EyeQ5 processor, which will soon be out of sync, will double the processing power of automobiles. One other competitor, ESPA aims to use draggable vehicle technology in electric tours and they planned to present it to the market soon (Budak, 2017). Today's technology was able to guide autonomous trucks for transporting goods yet, now, Tesla is trying to reach an agreement on this issue with different DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) branches in America. Tesla now is working on electrically powered trucks opening up an area where many famous companies would also be in business today. One of the other competitors, Uber had a company called Otto, a company based on Google and focused on the production of driverless vehicles. Alphabet, which was set up for the purpose of collecting all Google companies under one roof, is also one of the companies that are at the beginning of the production of driverless vehicles in the trucking sector. Though neither Elon Musk nor Tesla made a clear statement about the production of a driver-less vehicle and its implementation in trucks, the CEO of the company Musk recently mentioned that they were working on autopilot systems (Çankaya, 2017).
According to McKinsey & Co, the value of internet-connected cars would be creating a market of 750 billion dollars by 2030. At the moment there are ready wi-fi 12 million automobiles. Updating data, information processing and being interconnected with the substructure as well as the other vehicles and systems would be expected in any car in future. Depending upon the personalized factors of your automobile regarding your preferences, habits, needs, etc. the data required for these would be collected and your data would be specifically coded. Subaru already created a smart platform in the car providing information, entertainment and roadside assistance, both to the users and passengers for a joyful journey (Otomobil Tutkunu, 2015).
Companies are focused on driverless vehicle technology more than ever. One other competitor, ESPA aims to use draggable vehicle technology in electric tours and they planned to present it to the market soon (http://webrazzi.com/2017/02/16/surucusuz-otomobiller-yayginlastikca-otomobilsahipligi-azalacak-mi/). Today's technology was able to guide autonomous trucks for transporting goods yet, now, Tesla is trying to reach an agreement on this issue with different DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) branches in America. Tesla now is working on electrically powered trucks opening up an area where many famous companies would also be in business today. One of the other competitors, Uber had a company called Otto, a company based on Google and focused on the production of driverless vehicles. Alphabet, which was set up for the purpose of collecting all Google companies under one roof, is also one of the companies that is in the beginning of the production of driverless vehicles in the trucking sector. Though neither Elon Musk nor Tesla made a clear statement about the production of a driver-less vehicle and its implementation in trucks, the CEO of the company Musk recently mentioned that they were working on autopilot systems (https://webrazzi.com/2017/08/10/tesla-elektrikli-tirsurucusuz).
Nowadays, GM had an agreement with AT&T as to maintain Wi-Fi connection to its automobiles. They also established another agreement with IBM Watson to find out more about the individual profiles, habits and needs of the customers and to develop better automobiles since the target audience values the interactive and artificially intelligent automobiles more. The individuals look at the automobiles more at a functional level rather than the owner's position.
Pabuçciyan explains how these cars would be (2017): Depending upon the new technologies new generation automobiles carry at least 20 cameras, 7 lasers and Wi-Fi technology to prevent the passengers from dangers. Collecting 1.4 million pieces of images these cameras require a 45 GB storage per hour. The head of the technical team of Uber technologies Krikorian, stated that "All this technology is developed regarding the dangerous drivers. Once sitting at the back of the car, the passengers will feel themselves better protected and more comfortable." Even if believe in them or not, they will continue to develop this kind of technology just like the Smithsonian museums support for the space technology. The main problem if the human being will forget about the exams for driving licenser or the traffic rules, giving up driving themselves and leaving their places for the thinking machines or smart cars! (Pabuçciyan, 2017). The qualities of the autonomous cars would be developed in an extraordinary speed, yet, the desire to get an automobile seems to be decreasing. According to the estimated figure, in 2020 there will be around ten million driverless vehicles on roads. The automobile brands seem to be organizing all their production program after 2021 only for autonomous cars not the ordinary ones anymore.
However, nobody knows what will happen after the autonomous cars. For example, when automobiles first arrived in cities, policymakers in different countries took different approaches to the issue of mixing of vehicles and pedestrians. In the United States, policymakers invented the concept of "jaywalking" and introduced stringent laws to separate vehicles and pedestrians, in order to "protect pedestrian safety." (https://singularityhub.com/2018/06/25/what-if-autonomous-vehicles-actually-make-usmore-dependent-on-cars/).
Anyhow, current perception is that, these new generation vehicles are hoped to develop the cities into a more speedy and secure places where around six millions of people would be living (https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automatedvehicles). That's why instead of competing with each other all the brands are programming somewhat for their mutual benefits to create the compensation of providing their fleet to solve all the transportation problems. For example, Tesla argues that they will soon declare the first driverless fleet of Cadillac membership only for 1500 dollars per month.
Excluding the human factor, they also try to prevent 1.3 million deaths. Whereas tested for 2 million km Google autonomous cars had only 14 accidents and 13 of them were due to the human factor. Of course, there are many obstacles for this technology to be activated in real life. The substructure of the autonomous car system relies upon the traffic lights, roads and other details. Driverless cars can detect and grasp objects right away, but they still need a map system for traffic lights and road details. The weather condition is also a very big problem for driverless cars. In addition to traditional problems, new technologies have their own problems. The most important of these is called to be 'hacking' (https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automatedvehicles). In 2019, it was a major event for a Chinese security company to hack and disable West argues that people might make use of the autonomous cars in different ways, such as delivery vehicles and industrial applications as well as a new type of mobility for the senior citizens which is estimated to be covering 20 percent of the overall population by 2050 and the disabled ones that would be reaching to 22 percent of the whole adult population in USA. Even if the new technologies and driverless cars seem to be improving highway safety, alleviating traffic congestion and reducing air pollution, these will not be available for all levels of the society due to their high costs. Apart from their positive ways, there seems to be so many obstacles to adoption and utilization when the system failures due to the possible bad weather conditions, digital hacking and cyberbullying threats as well as poor highway infrastructure. Inadequate spectrum is a major barrier in many countries. While many advertisements popularize the idea for the time being, public acceptance stands as another major threat for the driverless cars. Also, apart from the rich and high status scale of the consumer profile, the need for a certain national policy and investment is crucial at least to make it develop within the given country circumstances, improve highway infrastructure and traffic management, allow road tests and accurate map development, develop technical standards and provide legal liability as well as public awareness. Also there seems to be data protection, privacy and security issues to be discussed.
Bonnefon, Shariff & Rahwan also put forward the question of ethics and decision making slightly weighing a bit more for the human side emphasizing the need for human factor: "For example, if an automated car is facing the outcome between hitting one child or a group of 10 kids, how does it make that choice? What are the factors in the algorithm that would lead its system to veer one way or another? One can imagine a wide variety of ethical issues that come along and software designers have to make choices regarding how to deal with them" (Bonnefon, Shariff and Rahwan, 2016). Yet, in the meantime, we need to concentrate more on the advertising and the profits it might yield since producing all these autonomous systems and cars require huge amount of Money and millions of experiments.
Perhaps that's why they pump up the news and ads first to prepare the customers to buy the dreams first and the products later. Potter calls is next step reality. In this case, "the message is presented as reality to resonate with the audience's experience and make it have the potential to be useful in everyday situations, but the message is also "sweetened" by an extra added ingredient that takes it one step outside of the audience's everyday existence. Therefore, people want media messages that are not so real that they are the same as their everyday lives. But neither do they want media messages that are so far removed from their experiences and needs that the messages have no immediate relevance. So, people want messages that are one step removed from real life; they want messages that show what is easily possible and make it seem probable and even actual." (Potter, 2016). So, in Potter's terms, the appearance of the heroes as cars in films and the realization of them in real life is a nice example of next step reality.
The first societies were the hunters. Millions years passed and in time, the societies were divided into different geographies, social classes and stratification gained more importance. Considering different development standards, for the moment being good, better or the best in the society matters carrying out different development standards of production and consumption, different life styles enriched by different expectations.
Technology is developing for all not for the rich ones only. The main point of view here could be the benefits of the whole society. Autonomous cars in the media are looked upon for the betterment of the best ones only. However, the society holds all classes of all different levels. If for example these new generation automobiles could be used for children could go to school safely with self-driving vehicles, or farmers, villagers, institutions get better conditions for their lives that would be so nice. Human being unfortunately experienced peaceful technologies to be used in war time. Development cannot necessarily bring happiness to all but to the distinguished ones only. Then, why all these news are making use of the mass media condemning everyone to be bombarded by these innovations if these are only the problem of an elite group. If we critically handle the autonomous cars news in media, we may easily see that children are also affected through the ads.
On one hand, children's issues, remains as a point of discussion in particular in the presence of the visual messages. The presence of children and the characteristics of this presence in the media, specifically in the context of television commercials are controversial issues due to the different ways of positioning the child image. Television brings together the general audience within the limits of their media ownership and viewing habits with the commercials promoting emerging, renewed or changing products. However, internet ads seem to be appealing a more selective, more conscious audience having higher media literacy rates. Especially within the everyday usage of the ads running on both media type and expressing 'mobility' car ads are an important tool in the forefront to discover the use of child image. As Morgan stated, due to the development and vitality of the industry, constantly updated car models as well as the high economic circulation rate compared to other sectors automobile sector often ends up with higher budget for ads. Focusing on worldwide different car brands, it is easy to see that the autonomous cars ads affect much more the younger ones than the rest of the society since the new generation's general intuitions for being and becoming the early adopters in society (Morgan, 2016).
Regarding the concept of mobility, how the child audience is expected to be mobilized through these images, the study focuses on the other mobility types in the ads such as the mobile phone or GSM ads. Positioning themselves as the futuristic ones, the youngsters are expecting more from the future and from mobility. The young generation of the 21st century is a bit different from the other young generations of the past. For example, in the days of the single television channel broadcasting, Turkish television was full of truck tire ads. These were inserted in any kind of programs covering a great bunch of the ads percentages (around 80%). However, the mass audience was not made up of decision-makers to buy the truck tires, the ones were either mainly driving when the ads were broadcasted or they had no opinion of what to buy since they were just the drivers not the owners of the trucks. The owners on the other hand were so rich as not to depend upon only the television ads they had better advisors, or they already had their own agents to work with. So, anyhow, the truck tire ads were there to occupy the general audience because they had enough money to buy all the slots in broadcasting even if it was not good for all.
Nowadays, it really looks just like in the old days. All the newspapers, television channels, automobile programs and magazines are full of autonomous car discussions yet, there seems to be no customers on the horizon. The older generations grow up with the images of Star Trek, Herbie and the Knight Rider and now we're exposed to the images of autonomous cars to come. It seems that the more we dream of the future the more it turns to be real. In other words, it's next step reality that would become true as we imagine and create the demand. Even if with the latest version of the autonomous automobiles, like Bumblebee (2018) costing around $135.000 the threat of new hybrid versions was instigated. The most common fear that machines having self-deciding features seems to be the nightmare of the current civilization. Yet, in most cases through the films, news-making agencies or the advertisements the future cars as the autonomous products are uploaded into the minds of the people, specifically of the young generation. Regarding it as a lifetime purchase the youngsters seem to be dying for such new generation products and it is easy for them to have through bank loans. The bombardment of the information and the uploaded, updated media information cause the dreams to refresh the memory and continue for better mobility opportunities.
In this case, not with regarding the brands, only the industrial societies would be developing certain standards and the inclusion or exclusion factors would be mainly affecting how the development standards would be cared for all. Anyhow, whereas most of the kids would be dreaming to drive their driverless cars in the upcoming future, the story of the autonomous cars issue seems to be a kind of war between the huge companies having conglomerations with the media. Selling the idea to the 1 st world countries mainly and challenging the 3 rd world countries as if they could buy or contribute to it.
One of the emerging questions is the isolation of the human being. If ever all the automobiles become driverless, autonomous, and fully equipped with the IoT facilities the impact of it on the human, would be perhaps losing his/her motivation and awareness. The feeling of having nothing to do, to observe, to take care of or to struggle, the human will only be ruled by virtual reality and artificial intelligence. There would be more time and space for the self and social alienation which could drive men mad.