Beyond Freedom and Dignity?

If B.F. Skinner designed human rat boxes....

Here's the ultimate warm fuzzy PC mobile for.... hmmmmm, what's the equivalent of an automotive tree hugger? A road hugger? No, I don't think so. Anyway, look at this, this thing:

" The p.o.d (personalization on demand) redefines ergonomics. When you approach, it “smiles” and opens its door. It actively monitors driving style and mood and adjusts accordingly. If the conversation is lively, it photographs the moment. It even wags its antenna when it's happy."
It's ugly and weird. It's fascist. The seats look to me like dentist chairs, and I would seriously distrust having anyone who'd want one of these things near me.

I have been having a ball down here in Nashville, and I don't think too many of the real people around here would buy an undignified car like the damnable "p.o.d."

Hideous!

It is an affront to automotive dignity, and to American dignity, if not human dignity. (Unfortunately, that means certain people might just buy it.)

(Link thanks to Hell In A Handbasket.)

UPDATE: I was still pissed off after posting this, so I elaborated to James Rummel about the "certain people" who'd buy this insidious monstrosity. Cities like Berkeley, California would buy them for the bureaucrats. So would the people who busy themselves building a better world in which we should all be forced to live. Finally, they'd be bought by the ineffectual hordes who cannot drive like normal people but nonetheless derive a collective feeling of smug superiority by banding together with fellow inferiors, looking to each other for mutual support and comfort. Inferiority can be very dangerous when it gives rise to such thinking. Look at the French! Look at Communism. Nazism. Radical Islam. Mob thinking almost always finds origin in one sort of inferiority complex or another, but it is late at night and I am getting off topic. (This is philosophy or something, and I only wanted to complain about a stupid car.)


posted by Eric on 10.25.03 at 09:46 PM





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Comments

this thing looks like an updated deux chaveux. the French equivalent of the vw bug. basically, it's just an old French whore with a metrosexual makeover.

ray   ·  October 26, 2003 08:02 AM

You're right. It looks like something the Thought Police would drive.

Steven Malcolm Anderson   ·  October 26, 2003 03:36 PM

When I first moved to Atlanta many years ago there was a development called Colony Square. They boasted that you could work there, live there, watch movies there, buy your groceries there. All in one small block!

I doubt anyone really did. But it seemed like an awful, horrifying way to even wish to spend your life.

Richard Evans Lee   ·  October 26, 2003 04:06 PM

Hadrian would definitely not drive this!

(In case some are wondering what wild reference I'm making:)

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/000267.html

As always, Eric, thought-provoking and erudite. I haven't commented or emailed lately, but I still stop in as regularly as clockwork. Did you ever get a chance to read that Flanagan novel?

Best,

Dan

Dan   ·  October 31, 2003 07:37 PM


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