BMW, a company that until recently was exemplary in preserving the bonds between car and driver, now gives us fake engine sounds, piped into the car's sound system to enhance the driving experience. I suppose one could call this auditory "information," but it doesn't inform one of anything. When falsification is offered as a remedy for abstraction, we have the engineering equivalent of the last, desperate days of the Roman Empire. Powdered mandarins glided about the Senate, ripe for conquest and slaughter. This decadence did not go unnoticed by the surrounding barbarians, and a new chapter in history began.
-Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment