Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses controversies about computationally enhanced cars. Disruptive occurrences involving these entities, I argue, demonstrate their formative ambiguity, as both politically generative and perverse. I conclude that recognizing this ambiguity is only more necessary in times of crisis.

Paper long abstract:

This paper finds its empirical starting point in a set of recent controversies about computationally enhanced vehicles, with a special focus on rigged and hackeable cars. Rejecting rigid distinctions between virtuous and sinful, good and evil, light and dark technology, I make the case for the 'formative ambiguity' of these problematic technological propositions. I show how recent disruptive occurrences involving computerized vehicles, namely street trials and (near-)accidents, operate in several different registers at once, including the moral, the political and the economic. More specifically, computational vehicles are shot through with concerns, but equally have the capacity to organise publics and unlock alternative futures. To conclude, I give reasons why the tactical and strategic affirmation of multi-valence becomes more and not less necessary in times of crisis.