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My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance. He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue. I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium. A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps. Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training). |