A few years back I saw a movie about an
air race across the English Channel, it was called, “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines”. This movie was
based in the period before World War I. It was a comedy, so obviously there
were exaggerations. This movie described men from each nation as type casts,
the flamboyant but god fearing catholic Italian, the loverboy French, the prim
and proper formal Englishman and the struggling dreamy eyed, world saving
American.
But what caught my fancy was the
description of the German. A very disciplined, mechanical and by-the-book guy.
This character was the butt of most of the jokes in the movie too. Why? Because
he was so mechanical and predictable, like a machine. What differentiates
humans from machines is the ability to think and do stuff you want to do.
Ability to control machines and not be controlled by machines.
With this background, I want to move on
to another area of human behaviour. The respect for and the need to display
skills. In the ages before automobiles, people rode horses. There were horsemen
and then there were skilled horsemen who became legends. Humans participate in
sports at various levels, mainly pitting their skills against others, be it
running, jumping, controlling a ball or controlling a bat.
All corporate talk about skill sets,
skill development and what not. Having skills is so very basic to human nature.
Not only that, there is a basic need to display these skills too. These skills
characterise the person. In advanced countries, even if you want a license to
ride a motorcycle, there are different licenses to ride bikes of increasing
displacement based on the skills required to ride them. There was a time when
cars were characterised by the skills required by a driver to control them and
drive them safely. A Porsche 911 required very high levels of skills to control
it because it had a rear engine and behaved differently from other normal (front
engine) cars.
With the advances in electronics and
computers, there have been a slew of developments in the field of mechatronics
and car control. We have ABS, EBD, ESR, SCP, HCC… and another gazillions of
acronyms. All these acronyms are just taking away the control of the car from
the driver. They control the tyre spin, they control torque distribution etc
etc etc. They improve safety. I am not saying safety is not important. Yes it
is and all these devices and systems have helped improve safety on road and
reduced fatalities. They are good, keep it up.
But now we have Google and other
companies, including some famed auto companies developing autonomous cars. Cars
that will drive themselves using sensors, lasers, cameras, radars and what not.
They will follow lanes, navigate to destinations, talk to other cars on road, Toyota
even wants its cars to smile and flash headlamps when they come across other
cars.
Even in Formula 1, the epitome of
automotive competition, the electronics are in control. Even the launch of the
car at start is controlled by a launch control software. Are we paying through
our nose to watch driver’s compete their driving skills against each other or
to watch PCBs (printing circuit board) competing against each other in Formula
1. I’d rather do that on my PC.
With cars becoming autonomous, which is
not a very distant reality, all you have to do is sit in your car and ask it to
drive you to a certain destination while you read news on your tablet. It will
drop you at the porch of your office and go park itself. When you want to
return, you call it again using an app on your phone and it will come pick you
up. And all this is not science fiction, mind you, these are technologies under
development with some success. You must have seen the advertisements of Volkswagen
Passat parking itself.
Again, I am not against safety and I am
not against convenience. But I belong to a group that loves automobiles. I love
to listen to the changes in the engine sound when I change gears, the surge in acceleration
when I blip the engine before slotting the next gear. I want to be able to
decide when I want to change gears, when I want a little bit of drift. I like
to feel the car’s rear stepping out and enjoy the feeling of getting it back in
line myself. I should have an option to
develop some driving skills and test them when I want. As a rider enjoys and
prides in controlling his horse, I want to be able to control my car, else I would
opt for a chauffeur. Because, the price at which these new fangled cars are
available, if I could afford them, I could definitely afford a chauffeur. By
the way, the name for the software controlling one such autonomous car is Jack.
I’d rather have a human Jack drive me around with whom I could discuss the
weather at least (now don’t put that as
an option in the software!).
Please let me remain a thinking, playing
human with skills and not a robot working in a production system which uses a
controlled transport system to reach his job, works there like a robot following
systems and procedures by the book. I want some freedom, somewhere I can be in
control of my life and my machine. Please do not question my existence as a
human being by letting electronics control everything…even my drive.
As a person who loves to drive, I think
such self driven talking cars should be left to Disney and Pixar. If you think
that people don’t know how to drive and need to be made safe by being driven by
technology, please do not given them license to drive. If you do not like to
drive, please use public transport but leave the car in the driver’s control.
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