| Thursday, August 8, 2002 |
01:40 - "What is possible has now exceeded what is desirable"
http://www.mobileblocker.com/info/information.asp
|
(top)  |
That's a quote from Bob Lutz of GM, in reference to monstrously overdone pieces of in-car technology like BMW's atrocious iDrive system, on which I just heard a scathing piece as part of tonight's All Things Considered on NPR (it's terribly funny to listen to, and I recommend it).
And now that we've got more technology than we know what to do with, particularly in the case of things like cell phones, we're as a society going to have to face a decision sooner or later: at what point does technology and its seductive charms become too convenient? At what point does one invoke Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' statement that "My right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins"-- and apply it to technology that provides convenience to one person at the expense of the comfort or well-being or safety of another?
I'm speaking, of course, of cell-phones. Having just sat through a staff meeting in which I counted an average of one ringing phone per ninety seconds, some of which were from the same person, most of which were loud, with a ring tone seemingly selected to be as piercing and bone-grindingly annoying as possible-- I would like to know when there will be some actual consequences laid upon the people who profess to "own" those phones (rather than being owned by them). Sure, I'm aware that there are many people who use cell-phones responsibly and sanely. I'm sure there are also plenty of Muslims who are non-violent and don't want to stab Jews in the eye. But in both those cases, I insist that the onus lies upon that "silent majority" to lay the smack down on the vocal and hideous minority, to let the world know that these kinds of statistical outliers are not to give a bad name to the community as a whole. (And if that doesn't happen, sometimes there's no choice but to assume that the only voice we hear representing such a community is the only one that there is to listen to.)
For instance, one could take the example of cell-phone use in cars. Some states (such as New York) have already passed laws forbidding people to use phones in cars without some kind of hands-free gear; but Paul tells me that such laws are so lax in their enforcement that they may as well not be there. Some might argue that "Hey, what's the big deal?" Whereas to me, it suggests that if the law is there but it's not acting as a deterrent, then someone needs to be made an example of.
Why, I might ask, is cell-phone use in cars not treated with the same severity as DUI? To my mind, it's the same exact thing. Driving Under the Influence. The implication is of "alcohol" or "drugs", but let's not be pedantic about this: the spirit of the DUI laws are to prevent people from driving after or while committing a willful act which actively hampers their own abilities to drive a car safely. And talking on a cell-phone while driving is at least as distracting as being drunk. I'm sure any highway patrolman who has overseen his share of T-bone accidents at intersections where the person on the phone "didn't see the other guy coming", or who has shoveled up one too many SUVs that have drifted off into the median of the freeway while the driver was busy yapping, and jerked his wheel back onto the road, causing the vehicle to fishtail and the wheels to knuckle over and the car to roll side-over-side into the grass, would be all to ready to agree. Particularly considering the number of the latter such cases in which the driver, strapped into his or her seat upside-down in the supine car, is still talking on the phone when the cop reaches the door.
I'm honestly interested in knowing: what makes non-hands-free in-car cell-phone use different from DUI? If the answer is "nothing", then why aren't the laws enacted and enforced in such a way that makes it no less undesirable or risky to do it than to drink and drive? And if the answer is something like "C'mon-- you can't honestly expect people to give up their cell-phones!", then I would ask to see some proceedings from the 30s, or whenever it was when the modern DUI/DWI laws were solidified; I would be not at all surprised to discover that there was a significant, vocal outcry from motorists: "Hey, c'mon! You can't seriously be asking us to give up drinking in the car, or driving home plastered from the bar! What kind of fascist government would ask such things of us?"
Shifting gears for a moment-- iDrive represents a forward-thinking step toward the greater integration of technology into our cars, for the betterment of drivers everywhere. But as it's implemented by BMW, it's a joke-- and not a very funny one. It's easy to see what the designers were trying to do-- they thought, "Hey-- we've got computers that can watch DVDs and download the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the same time; in-car technology surpassed that of the lunar lander so long ago it's a wonder our cars can't fly to the moon themselves. So why the hell are we still making people fiddle with specialized, one-function knobs and buttons? We should make everything work like a computer!" ... Except that nobody seems to understand that operating a computer, with a mouse-like device and contextual menus and no tactile feedback, is a process that requires cognitive processing and complete visual attention. (This is acceptable at a desk because we can afford to devote our whole attention to navigating an operating system. But in a car, it can be fatal.) The human body is wired to understand spatial relationships, rather than abstract algorithms such as "last-modified date" (as in the much-ballyhooed and now much-discredited "Diary metaphor") or "functional groupings" (as with iDrive's hierarchical menuing system). We like to be able to reach for controls that we know how to operate without looking, or even thinking. In fact, that's crucial to survival in a car.
Some things that were designed in the 1930s had better UI principles that things that are being designed in 2002. That's because sometimes, the best ideas are the first ones we come up with-- despite the lack of certain kinds of technology which could have influenced those ideas.
That's why, for instance, one can't argue that cell-phones are perfectly safe because pilots have been flying airplanes for decades while talking on the radio, and that's never caused a crash. No-- it's a totally different thing. Airplanes and their radios were designed to work together-- so that the reaction time required in flying a plane would intermingle with the terse command language flowing back and forth; pilots don't have to react nearly as fast as motorists do, and when they do, their attention is focused on the radio conversation and the plane's controls as a unit. It's all the same machine. It's designed to channel one's attention efficiently toward where it needs to be. But automobile controls are a technology and an operation paradigm that precede cell-phones by a hundred years. The cadences of movement and the rhythms of reaction are incompatible. They don't play nice together.
But cell-phones are cool, and they're so hard to say no to. The race to put more and more functionality into phones is every bit as intense and fast-moving as the race to add features to Netscape back in 1996. There seems to be no limit to the things we can do, or the functions that a cell-phone can serve.
But in the midst of that race, it's very easy to lose sight of those basic tenets of civilized living that have served us so well for so long: public courtesy, driving safety, and the idea that talking on the phone-- to someone who can't see when someone is about to merge into your lane or when your wheels are about to stray onto the shoulder, and therefore doesn't know to shut up so you can concentrate on driving-- is something that should occur when you're stationary and in private.
The ability to break those guidelines of common sense does not confer a license to do so.
If I could get one of these MobileBlocker devices to carry around with me, I would. And if Apple were to release something called iMeltYourCellPhone (regardless of how unlikely it would be that Sony-Ericsson would be a strategic partner), I'd preorder the first one off the assembly line.
|
|
