You’re late. Racing down your local autobahn. The car ahead of you is driving erratically, swerving and weaving with reckless abandon. Could it be the driver has had too much to drink? Or perhaps it’s just a lucky fellow getting a Lewinsky from his pal in the passenger’s seat?
Or, it just might be a stressed-out, time-crunched and insecure executive type, or execu-wannabe, trying to send a fax. Or surfing the Web. Or cooking.
Yes, cooking.
Welcome to the car of the future, one jammed full of electronic gizmos like fax machines, PCs with built-in (and voice-activated) internet access, and outlets for stoves. And we’re not talking the big family Winnebago for that August drive to the Grand Tetons; this is for the daily grind to and from work.
Cybercars
Consider recent dispatches from the automotive front lines, as reported by Young & Rubicam’s Brand Futures Group. Toyota, Toshiba and Fujitsu have teamed up to develop a multimedia system that offers not only internet access, but dozens of video and audio channels as well. IBM, Netscape and Delphi Automotive Systems are said to be working on a system that displays real-time stock prices (do you really want to see your net worth plummet at 65 mph?) on the dashboard. Microsoft and others toil away on their versions of the networked car, one in which escape from reality will never again be possible.
The future is upon us. It’s full of techno-overload. And, boy, if you don’t like what you’ve seen so far, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
If you’re a train commuter into a major city, you’ve already seen the future, of course. And chances are, you think it’s just plain annoying. Where once we read quietly, or perhaps even engaged in civilized conversation with our travelling companions about Tony Blair or the Yankees or the upcoming holiday in Tuscany, now our privacy is invaded by some loud blabbering slob screaming into a digital cell phone. Usually, it’s about some inanity that clearly could have waited for office hours. And it’s usually, quite rightly, greeted with loud harumphs all around the carriage. Imagine how even more unsettling the evening rush hour traffic will be when a similar bore discovers faxing in the fast lane.
Surrogate office
Marketers say that our rush to encompass the latest and greatest of personal technology devices is rooted in a work world where no-one has enough time to do the assigned job and convenience is the most prized solution of all. So, as the consumer society continues its never-ending expansion, not unlike the universe, we naturally arrive at the stage of evolutionary development in which the car becomes the surrogate office or kitchen.
We’re just too darn busy to segment our lives the old-fashioned way: the workday simply can’t end at 5.30 or 6.30. It now needs to be a never-ending cycle, broken only by the unavoidable need to sleep. (But no doubt someone at a pharmaceutical giant is already working on a new lifestyle drug to take care of that little inconvenience.)
But perhaps there’s actually some deeper tragedy that explains the rush to embrace intrusive information technologies that make the endless workday feasible.
We all know life has gotten a whole lot more unpredictable in recent years. A job-for-life has given way to what-have-you-done-for-me-since-lunch? (Or even what-have-you-done- me-for-since-lunch?) Booming financial markets reverse course with breathless abruptness. And in our personal lives, well, modularity of relationships seems now to be the norm.
Like a layer of smog blanketing us from morning to dusk, we live enveloped by uncertainty. So we need, in our secular societies, to surround ourselves with the visual symbols of our meaning, our purpose, our success. We’re out to constantly prove something to someone, if only ourselves. For a couple of thousand years or so, we’ve been entirely too sophisticated to howl at the moon, and since the 15th century, to let the Pope tell us what the big picture is all about.
Cult of indispensability
So we find meaning in a new set of cultural myths that says, whatever our line of work, we are truly indispensable. The company, the agency, the marketplace, the customer simply cannot, will not, function unless we are plugged in and instantly available, whenever and wherever some equally besieged victim thinks it to be necessary.
The new car gizmos reflect not so much life-improving advances in information technologies, but a sad cry for some recognition and safety.
Which is not to say that there is a certain element of boys-and-their-toys fun in all this. A few years back, I had the good fortune, through a friend, to be invited to a night out in London with one of the UK’s best-known newspaper editors. Discretion (and, of course, the always-possible future need to direct my CV his way) suggests that his identity need not be revealed. Suffice it to say that he is one of the UK’s more visible television talking heads. In the US, he was on air for hour after hour in the days following a certain princess’s unfortunate demise.
My host that evening had the benefit of a chauffeur-driven vehicle of some brand unknown to this decidedly inattentive car owner. I may not remember the type of car in which we were ferried; but I do remember the fax machine as it sat pertly on a shelf beneath the partition separating us from the driver. And the utter glee with which the otherwise worldly editor showed off his newest plaything. Another notch on his bragging rights totem pole made him happy, almost as much as the much younger lady on his arm.
Me, I think that we should all remember that we work to live, that when the workday ends, our real lives resume. So when it comes to doling out goodies in the car, I’ll just take the Lewinsky, thank you very much.
