How many ways can we be bombarded by the power of little chips to think for us or to reach out to us? Most of us have been able to turn off the annoying, eye-blinking, skip-sliding paper-clip-with-the-lightbulb feature that pops up in Microsoft Word. Now there is a feature that tells you that you are not regularly using all the icons on your desktop. So? I like a messy desk. It gives me something to clean up when I need to bring order to something in my life. But I will clean it up on my schedule, and with no reminders, thank you very much.
This week there was a fascinating article by Jim Motavalli in The New York Times about dumbing down over-engineered cars. I have experienced some of these "features" in rental cars but had never really thought about how annoying they might be if you actually owned the car. My favorite is the power window that always goes all the way down, when you really only want to open the window just a little bit. There is a new feature that beeps at you when the outside temperature nears 32 degrees. Can you imagine these past few weeks having that beep go off on a regular basis? In addition to the "frosty weather" beep, the clock becomes a thermometer in these conditions. The litany of annoying features is long, and the success rate for shortening the list seems to depend on a level of engineering skills possessed by few people. So we tolerate the GPS system that asks the same inane question when the car is started, we listen to the clunk of all the locks when we shift into drive, and the list of annoyances stays long.
Have you downloaded a Podcast yet? This new technology is already six months old. Hurry, or you might find yourself dreadfully dated in some power-play conversation. (Hint: It is not necessarily about cars.)
Do not read me wrong. I am fascinated with all these new tools and ideas. Who would think that we would care enough to be warned about the weather outside when we can read an interior display that beams this information to us inside the car? Someone sold the idea. I personally like the beep that is available now when a car is in your blind spot. That is a good idea, but I would turn it off, for I like the exercise of turning my neck to see what is around my speeding vehicle. Definitely not cool, but very good exercise to keep the neck muscles from stiffening up.
The next great technology breakthrough will be when we are given the ability to scan all of the features that we are dealing with and simply turn on or off the ones we, rather than the engineers, would like to use.
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