VW shows off a 180+ mile-per-charge electric kool-aid sequel to the hippie fav microbus that may or may not see production *yawn... I mean, niccccce :P*. Ok, I like looking at it but in the same way I liked looking at the Stargate: SG1 episode "1969"; cute but leaves me thinking "filler". The "V" in VW must stand for "version" since nearly every car in their lineup is a version of another car. So why am I posting (for reasons other than being a troll *lol*)? This quote: "...uses an iPad to control the entertainment system, climate control and other functions."
It appears that someone else realizes that smart mobile devices (smartphones, pads) contain the minutia of our identities *and* realizes that these tidbits might have relevance to customizing/personalizing our vehicles. I say "someone else" because I tossed this observation out as loose talk in a conversation a month ago. The argument goes like this: 1) car companies have spent a lot of money over the years creating all sorts of proprietary, walled-garden customization gizmos that, as a whole, have probably cost more in development than they've earned, 2) car companies, by and large, know jack about UI (user interface) design, 3) tech is moving so rapidly that "today's" cool features (cooked up years ago, given common design-to-market cycles in the auto industry) are less-than-fresh almost as soon as they hit the market, 4) since folks are already loading their smart devices up with personal identity, 5) and know how to use their devices (presumably), 6) and are used to "there's an app for that", 7) why not ride the cluetrain to limiting the design of vehicle controls to "core systems" plus a common interface standard with smart devices, 8) so that smart devices perform the heavy lifting on customizing (really, providing the data for customizing) and controlling (a little trickier what with potential reliability/availability issues in smart devices compared to vehicles) what is customizable in a vehicle.
Some flavor of this thinking appears to be at work in VW's decision to use an iPad in "microbus: redux". That's cool.
Gone would be the search through the manual for that one silly way to set the driver-side seat adjustments. Gone would be pushing buttons randomly on the good-looking-but-useless flatscreen control panel on the dash that is different in every car that has one. Instead, pop open an app, use controls you already know, and race down the road in a lovely bubble of your own idiosyncrasies. Rental car companies! Are you listening?
Yes, yes. I know the devil is in the details but I also know this: I'm not the only one that gets pished transferring parts or the whole of my identity to make tech go. And I also know that the smart-mobile category isn't going away anytime soon (the Zombie Apocalypse being the major foreseeable crimp in the trend). So get busy, peeps! Post-Convergence means that isolated (and isolating) innovation will fail and the distinction between "device" and "person" is almost meaningless. Ride the cluetrain so that we can ride in comfort in any vehicle we plunk our cybernetic selves into. Now off with you... and don't come out until you're done! And while you're down in the Mad Scientist Dungeon, make me that fusion powered flying car that was promised to me in the "21st Century" *cue dramatic music sting*.
++vn
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