Being ‘connected’ doesn’t really bring us closer
Cars’ future uncertain when kids would rather surf Web than drive
Soon, probably some time in the very near future, we’re all going to have to ask ourselves a question, one whose profundity extends far beyond a mere automotive column, one that’s being pondered by far deeper thinkers than me.
Can we really believe that a virtual world is truly the equal of real life?
Yes, I know I sound like an undergrad philosophy student with not enough homework. Nonetheless, it is a question that is perplexing automobile manufacturers. The stranglehold on the hearts and minds of the young that they’ve enjoyed since the invention of the automobile is slipping away as our spawn closet themselves in their basement lairs, noses buried in iphones or ipads or whatever else passes for vehicles of human interaction these days.
John Mcfarland, Chevrolet’s senior manager of global marketing strategy, probably expressed the situation best when he told attendees at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week that 54 per cent of millennials would rather connect with their friends via social media than actually get in their cars and physically interact.
That statistic, naturally, is extremely worrying to automakers. By General Motors’ reckoning, the youth market potentially represents as much as 40 per cent of its sales, a real market in peril of losing its mojo to a virtual one.
That concern is already influencing car design. GM, for instance, launched its Mylink on-board infotainment system at the Detroit auto show, its latest complex and sophisticated interactive system, seemingly a reaction to crosstown rival’s Myford Touch system. It’s also another poke in the eye to all those safety experts decrying the distractions overwhelming people behind the wheels of their cars. One assumes that staying connected with one’s Facebook friends is more important than not hitting that bridge abutment.
For a moment, put aside the thought that these may be the mutterings of a fuddy-duddy who wonders if young people will really be better off without experiencing the joy that is their first long-distance road trip. Or that, like all gearhead dads, I assume my offspring’s existence would be enhanced with the piecing together of an ancient and crumbling Galaxie 500 with duct tape, baling wire and the judicious placement of a matchbook cover. Or even — God forbid the parents find out — the thrill of their first tire-squealing burnout in their father’s ’64 Biscayne.
But do we really want to replace the real with the pretend? Virtually every one of the aforementioned youthful exploits can be replicated online, albeit with updated and more exotic machinery. Yet, does a full-throttle launch in a virtual Ferrari in any way match the realworld version in a rusty old two-tone Chevy? Does an Xbox ride around the Nurburgring circuit in any way replicate the terror of throwing a Mclaren-powered BMW X6 into the Carousel?
There can be no denying the allure: We are a lazy species after all. Given the choice of swatting the perfect 200-kilometres-an-hour serve at Wimbledon and watching the same thing on TV, a significant number of us will grab a fresh bag of potato chips and sink farther into the couch.
It is that very laziness that so concerns automakers. After all, why, if you’re a particularly lethargic youth, waste all that energy pushing down on a gas pedal in the real world where it might rain or snow, when you can just bang a few keys, never more than five metres away from the fridge and a two-litre jug of Mountain Dew?
The truly worrisome part, far deeper than concerns about whether any particular automaker — and even automobiles in general — survive is what happens to us when we can’t be motivated to get off our expanding behinds and go out and mingle.
Am I really on the delusional side of the slippery slope to wonder if this much Facebooking will turn us all into pasty blobs so inactive that we require robots to feed us our Twinkies? Far more prophetically, perhaps: are those relationships cultivated on the World Wide Web as significant as those formalized when we get in our cars and head over to watch the Super Bowl in our cousin John’s basement?
My son, for instance, has legions of online “besties,” but only one actual long-term good friend. You guessed it: They’ve known each other since Grade 3 and meet in person (she drives over) at least once a week.
For more than 100 years, the car has brought people together.
So, too, now do Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and myriad other social media I’ve managed to avoid. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one does it better.