DanThornton

Tech, Geekery, Pop Culture, Miscellaneous

Cars in Electric Dreams…

By 1 Comment

In the next 10-15 years, choosing your new car will simply be a case of choosing which container you prefer for your battery packs. And at some point soon after, for your self-driving algorithm.

In many ways that’s a very good thing. Obviously that power needs to be generated somehow, and there are debates over exactly how much the environment benefits, but on the whole it’s beneficial that humanity tries to find ways to live on Earth in less harmful ways, and for anyone outside large cities, public transport is usually problematic at best for daily life.

But I can’t help feeling sad about this particular area of progress.

Lowrider engine bay - London Motor Museum

I’ve grown up romantically involved with the internal combustion engine. I loved the freedom it gave me at 17 when I passed my driving test, and the exhilaration I felt when I did the same on two wheels.

Some of my favourite memories are riding through remote Welsh forests on an enduro bike, or the overwhelming experience of my first track day at Brands Hatch, having been brought up as a fan of all forms of motor racing.

I’ve spent time with my dad in the garage coaxing vehicles back to life, and if I wasn’t sure my father always enjoyed having a rebellious teenage son around, it was shown by watching him standing knee deep in snow replacing a water pump on my first car.

There’s something about the sound, the noise, the smell, and the empowerment of commanding those initially mysterious mechanical workings.

With all the talk about skeuomorphism when it comes to iPhone apps and websites, I wonder whether anyone will be able to successfully capture any of those feelings and emotions in the future, or whether the back of my mind will still be mourning the decline of the petrol engine?

It does mean that when I dream about owning my dream garage, I may need to invest in a small scale oil refinery at the same time.

Muscle Cars at London Motor Museum

Friendships and social media

By Leave a Comment

I’ve just spent a  great day with a friend I hadn’t seen in 20 years, thanks to re-connecting on Facebook. A few years ago, the same thing happened when someone I knew in America appeared online, and I’d lost his contact information a decade earlier.

That wouldn’t have happened when I was a teenager, or at least would have been a far rarer occurrence. Especially when it comes to staying connected with friends in other countries and continents.

That’s the good side of social media which stands out. The flip side is the fact it potentially enables obsessive stalking, social engineering and risks to child safety, which should be handled objectively and shouldn’t be ignored.

But there’s another aspect to social media I’ve been thinking about.

 

Social Media means you can’t ‘lose’ people

There are a huge number of people I’m very grateful to have in my life. Some are close family and friends, some are former colleagues, and some are people I’ve encountered over the years who are just brilliant in one or more ways, whether that’s because they’re talented, intelligent, entertaining, kind, or fun to hang out with when we get a rare chance to connect. And social media has enabled me to keep in touch with them whether they’re in the same country or continent, enabling a kind of ‘ambient closeness’ which means I might not see them for years, but can still share the fact they’re now married, have kids, liked the same movies etc.

At the same time, it means theoretically it’s almost impossible to lose touch with people.

Unless it’s on purpose.

And you’ll both know it’s on purpose.

  • So do you accept that Friend Request from the person you barely knew years ago at school or at work?
  • Do you create a list for adding people you have no particular interest in connecting or reconnecting with?
  • And what happens when you disagree with something intrinsic to someone’s character? If they’re racist, for example?
  •  What about former wives, partners and boyfriends/girlfriends? Do you accept a friend request from an ex?

 

Should we be accumulating everyone we’ve ever known, or is it becoming socially acceptable to filter and even cull people we no longer have a desire to socialise with? And how does being removed by people affect us, particularly when it’s someone we might have felt we were close to?

Fenceless farming and flexible technology

By Leave a Comment

I was fascinated by this article on The Atlantic website about virtual ‘fences’ and how they could change farming. By using a combination of GPS and deterrents, livestock could be moved around a territory to the best places for natural resources in real-time, which opens up a lot of possibilities for areas which were cost-prohibitive, as well as increased collaboration by groups of livestock owners, for example.

It’s well worth taking a look – I tend to find I get more inspired by seeing how technology is being used in non-marketing applications, and then applying that to my own areas of expertise, than simple watching the latest marketing trends and tools.

It’s interesting to think that in 20+ years, fences could be a symbolic symbol for humans, rather than required for animal control.

I also loved this insightful quote:

Anything that I can do in my profession to encourage flexibility, I figure I’m doing the correct thing. That’s where this all came from. It never made sense to me that we use static tools to manage dynamic resources. You learn from day one in all of your ecology classes and animal science classes that you are dealing with multiple dynamic systems that you are trying to optimize in relationship to each other. It was a mental disconnect for me, as an undergraduate as well as a graduate student, to understand how you could effectively manage dynamic resources with a static fence.

Given that humans are dynamic resources, it makes sense that flexibility is as important to us, whether that’s building businesses, or working with employees, etc.