So London has "Hackney Carriages" ('black cabs') and minicabs. Black cabs are allowed to pick you up on-demand ('streetwork') or at taxi ranks (a designated place where you can expect to find multiple taxis just queued up waiting for you), minicabs you have to order. (Apps are making this a bit hazy, since ordering either via an app is just as easy).
The 'green badge' is your licence. There's green, yellow, and 'minicab' licences. Green is a citywide black cab, Yellow is constrained to one area, and minicab is no black cab, but dispatch-only.
'The Knowledge' is the test (and associated training) required to become a black cab driver. It's years worth of study. It's pretty much memorising an A-Z, but also knowing the best routes, at different times of the day, etc.
Three vehicles you can expect to see almost everywhere in London are red busses, black cabs, and scooters with a clipboard on the handlebars. The latter are drivers on their multi-year study of The Knowledge.
Pre GPS it was a requirement that cabbies have a massive list of places and routes through London memorized (that guy taking 3.5 years to study and pass the entrance exam is pretty par for the course).
Separately, this is the kind of non robots doing manufacturing automation that I think it's important to think about when we have discussions of future work, etc.
Because on the one hand it's stunningly fantastic that what used to take someone 4 years and a series of examinations to achieve is now included for a negligible cost in the pocket supercomputer (of 1996) that we all carry around in our pocket. But, it's also a huge shift for all these industries.
I think anyone who’s Ubered much (or driven much, for that matter) can tell you GPS is not nearly as good as knowing the streets. It may be good enough that it’ll take over, but it’s still a lot worse.
GPS is better in that there's accountability. For complex cities, as a driver you can really screw over a passenger by taking a convoluted route. As a passenger, you can watch the driver leave the GPS route (or get a trip report) and know that you've been (or are being) screwed.
The Knowledge is a test black cab drivers have to take. They basically spend several years learning various streets and routes in the city [1]. It essentially turns them into a human GPS.
The 'green badge' is your licence. There's green, yellow, and 'minicab' licences. Green is a citywide black cab, Yellow is constrained to one area, and minicab is no black cab, but dispatch-only.
'The Knowledge' is the test (and associated training) required to become a black cab driver. It's years worth of study. It's pretty much memorising an A-Z, but also knowing the best routes, at different times of the day, etc.
Three vehicles you can expect to see almost everywhere in London are red busses, black cabs, and scooters with a clipboard on the handlebars. The latter are drivers on their multi-year study of The Knowledge.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-te...