George Orwell's "1984," first published 60 years ago, is the story of a man whose occupation was fixing and adjusting official records and political reading to agree with the party line.
A WORLD OF 24-HOUR CAMERAS and Thought Police, it redefined the idea of "big brother" and made "Orwellian" a household word. It caused a sensation and fed imaginations for decades, and some at the time termed it anti-socialism, which Orwell denied in a letter to the United Auto Workers in 1949. I wonder what Orwell would have written about today's technology.
Your truck records data on how you drive, said to be occasionally used by the manufacturer and only to assist in making vehicles safer by drawing on a broader database. But who controls that data? They may try to use the data to deny warranty service if your vehicle has been on a track, even if it was only there as a pace or chase car.
When Ford introduced MyKey last year, many labeled it technology that would allow controls: It can cap a vehicle's speed at 80 mph, artificially limit acceleration, limit stereo volume to 44 percent of maximum if the seatbelt isn't fastened, leave the chime on continuously if the seatbelts aren't fastened, give a 75-miles-to-empty warning, and warn the driver that a recommended speed has been exceeded. Are these warnings really about safety?
In fact, will they even work? These buzzers and chimes presumably come from the instrument panel, the same spot as the speedometer. When people exceed the speed limit, it isn't because they don't know what speed they're going or can't read the speedometer. And speed limiters aren't the answer, either: I've been in vehicles with these so-called safety devices, and when you move a lane over to pass slower traffic as quickly as possible and find your truck suddenly stops pulling at 82 mph, the pass immediately becomes less safe.
Today's low-fuel light comes on in plenty of time to get to a station. Ignore it, and you take a long walk with a red can. Lesson learned. Is another warning necessary? If a chime starts going off, all you need do is turn up the stereo until you can't hear it anymore. Most of us know someone who just sat on the buckled seatbelt when buzzers first came out. Any warning can be ignored.
When Ford was lobbying the insurance industry to join in by offering discounted rates on MyKey-equipped cars, it characterized MyKey as a fleet tool "to help enforce company policies," as much as it offers any parental benefits. Fleet managers may say that's the same thing. The insurance industry, which runs on numbers, will wait until statistics show MyKey actually affects driver behavior. Interestingly, MyKey doesn't limit Sync or voice activation for cell-phones, noting that "people are going to bring those devices into the vehicle and we can't actually stop teens from using them." Really? If it's part of the car, you can.
General Motors' OnStar has added stolen-vehicle slowdown to its repertoire, not only advising law enforcement where a car is, but essentially shutting off if it fails to stop. Again, I'm all for stopping for the police, but even they make mistakes occasionally and it'll be interesting if OnStar or Johnny Law ever make an error in vehicle identification.
Am I the only one who thinks this is just the tip of the iceberg? Think about the information being processed in a modern vehicle (some parameters 1000 times a second), the remote diagnostic abilities, and how much you can get and do over the Internet. Cars and trucks are becoming huge four-wheeled wireless receivers, and some operator in Detroit or India is going to do exactly what his script tells him to.
The EPA also acts as Big Brother, telling your car what it can and can't do, but it's quite undemocratic about the way it does it. An out-of-compliance emissions-system problem on a gasoline engine causes the "check engine" light to come on, but you can keep on driving; my truck's "check engine" light has been on since 1992 because of an alternator change. But if a modern diesel runs low on diesel exhaust fluid, which would put it out of compliance, you have only so many miles or starts before it stops. How soon will it be before the EPA requires gasoline engines to be shut down wirelessly if a warning light is on too long? And how much will it cost you to have it reset?
Finally, Oregon is pressing ahead on its highway-mileage tax idea to replace the gas tax it takes credit for starting in 1919. The state's problem is that it gets a huge chunk of its budget from fuel taxes (and very little from registration fees) and fuel-efficient cars are eroding revenue. Oregon claims a statewide average of 11.8 mpg in 1970 and 20 mpg these days, while some people are more optimistic: In a December 30, 2008, Web posting, Betsy Imholt, administrator for the road user fee pilot program, says there will be "cars on the market that get 100 mpg" in 2009.
Oregon hasn't finalized anything yet, but any method of taxing by mile (which will be logged by GPS) must be done on a vehicle-weight basis. Ground loading is what wears out a road, far more than emissions, and granting a 5500-pound-GVW hybrid any advantage over a 5500-pound-GVW pickup nullifies any equal-protection clauses in the Constitution, just like toll roads and HOV lanes do. There are many problems with this plan, including a 20-year phase-in for new cars (old cars and out-of-staters pay gas tax) and too many terms that haven't been defined yet, such as "reasonable" and "affordable."
Yes, I am pessimistic, but it's never too late for civil disobedience. Besides, we have to keep an eye on Big Brother and family before we all end up driving robotrucks.