IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

186 Chapter 9
just a dumb bird. It doesn’t add up. And if it doesn’t add up now, how
much worse will things get when my Chromotherm’s children and grandchildren,
swarms of smart devices and pervasive computing and ‘‘ambient
intelligence,’’ turn up?
Ubiquitous computing spreads the appearance of intelligence and connectivity
to more or less everything. Whether all these chips will make
for a better product—let alone a better life—is a moot point. Not long
ago, I rented a car in which was installed a high-end Pioneer car radio. I
want to share with you a summary of the specifications that appear in the
owner’s manual (see box 9.1). I felt as if I had an ‘‘auto-flap motorized face’’
myself by the time I’d struggled through this list, only to find that one
piece of high-tech wizardry was missing: an on-off switch! As a result, I did
the entire journey without music.
They call this phenomenon ‘‘feature drift’’ in consumer electronics—the
engineering equivalent of playing with your food. And it’s beginning to
hurt a lot of companies, because a gap is opening up between the functionality
of technology, on the one hand, and the perceived value of that
Box 9.1
Feature drift: Car radios
Supertuner III TM with RDS (Radio Data System); 24-Station, 6-Button (18FM/
6AM) Presets; BSM (Best Stations Memory); AGC (Automatic Gain Control);
Optimum CD Tracking Performance; Playback Compatible with Digital Audio
CD-R; IP (Interactive Pioneer) Bus System Control; Multi-CD Player; Component
Single CD or MD Players; Voice Commander (CD-VC50 & CD-VC60);
TV Tuner (GEX-P7000TV); Disc Title Memory; 10-Character Display for Disc
Title; Memory, CD Text (SCD & MCD) & NMD Title (With Scroll); Disc List;
MOSFET45 (45W 4-Channel High Power); HiVolt RCA PreOuts ( 3 Pair);
Two-Way Crossover (HPF and LPF); Front/Rear HPF; Sub-Out LBF; Sub-Out
Level and Phase Control; EEQ Performance Chip; 3-Band Performance Equalizer;
Easy EQ (EEQ) Switches; I-User EQ Presets (SuperBass, Powerful, Natural,
Vocal, Flat, Custom); Source Custom EQ Memory; Selectable Loudness Control
(Low, Mid, High, Off ); Selectable FIE (Front Image Enhancer); Rear LPF;
Auto-Flap Motorized Face; Detachable Face Security; DFS Alarm; Wireless Full-
Function Smart Remote Control with Mounting Base; Cellular/Navigation
Mute; Multi-Color Organic EL Display; Full-Motion Animated 3D Graphics;
High Resolution Display (256 52 Pixels); High Resolution Display; Super
Bright (60 Candela) with Wide Viewing Angle (170 Degrees); Level Indicator