The Boiling Frog: Patronising Electronics

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Patronising Electronics

Today I have taken delivery of a new car - minus a "Euro" plate. It's the same model as before but as expected with newer cars there are one or two tweaks and "improvements" that have taken place over the years. In this instance most of the changes as far as I can see are refinements to save costs and money - and there are some changes like an absence of a spare wheel which are presumably to improve the car's fuel economy by saving weight.

With the evolution of electronics and computers, we often find that they have moved on from being useful tools to help us into ones that provide useless and superfluous functions all in the spirit of marketing. Digital cameras, mobiles, televisions and DVD players all suffer from this affliction, usually to the extent where a line gets crossed into the territory of being patronising.

And so it proves with my new car - the dashboard display helpfully informs me when to change gear. One wonders why I bothered with a driving licence, or passing my test, when a car now tells me how to drive. Nothing makes my point better than this lifted directly from the car's manual:

"Upshift"... is shown as a symbol in the Driver Information Centre with Uplevel Display (what?) or Uplevel-Combi-Display (again what?), when upshifting is recommended for fuel saving reasons".

Apparently this new feature is known as "EcoFlex drive assistant".

Well thanks chaps, all I need now is a YouTube tutorial on how to open a can of beer as well. Thank God I don't have to think for myself anymore.

9 comments:

The Filthy Engineer26 June 2013 at 20:07
I hired a Ford Focus eco thingamyjig in Portugal and it nagged the same. The bloody underpowered thing would tell me I needed to be in fifth gear going uphill, even though my foot was pedal to the metal. ECo crap.
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Flyinthesky26 June 2013 at 20:33
There's a short answer to all this, the worst day's work we ever did was allow inanimate objects a brain and the option to voice an opinion.
Being admonished by an inanimate machine, coming to a washing machine near you.
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TheBoilingFrog26 June 2013 at 22:26
Sometimes I have some sympathy with this chap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN37Fn3Hw8E
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Woodsy4227 June 2013 at 22:26
But just imagine, If BL still existed it could have had a square steering wheel and an electronic back seat driver. Considering how badly they were received back then I'm surprised any car firm would try and reintroduce the back seat driver idea.

Seriously, there must be a wire you can disconnect somewhere to kill it.
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James Higham3 July 2013 at 11:28
And so it proves with my new car - the dashboard display helpfully informs me when to change gear. One wonders why I bothered with a driving licence

Keep it simple, keep it basic. Design philosophy good for lonely roads - and oceans.
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Flyinthesky4 July 2013 at 14:05
A bit late in the day I know TBF but all this technology is designed with one purpose in mind, to make sure "you" can't mend it.
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"Let's imagine Europe is a football club and you join, but once you're in it you can't say let's play rugby". (French foreign minister Laurent Fabius)

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(Lord Pearson)

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(Wikipedia)

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(ECJ Case 6/64)

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"One must never forget that monetary union, which the two of us were the first to propose more than a decade ago, is ultimately a political project. It aims to give a new impulse to the historic movement toward union of the European states"
(Giscard d’Estaing, who drafted the EU Constitution 1997)

"The process of monetary union goes hand in hand, must go hand in hand, with political integration and ultimately political union. EMU [economic and monetary union] is, and always was meant to be, a stepping stone on the way to a united Europe"
(Wim Duisenberg, first president of the EU Central Bank)

"Once the interlude of [WWI] was over, [countries] all went back to the rules and customs of traditional parliamentary democracies. I felt out of my depth."
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

"We need to build a United States of Europe with the [EU] Commission as government."
(Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner 2014)

"We had imagined a political 'grand design', a new international order..."
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

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(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')

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(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')

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(Lady Thatcher, Statecraft)

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(Ted Heath)

Euro quotes

"Euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline in rest of Europe than any number of exhortations from IMF or OECD".
(Nick Clegg, 2002)

"We're happy to give the Greeks anything, just not money".
(German MEP Markus Ferber 2010)

"The Euro has been a rock of stability... Joining the single currency would be a major step".
(Labour MEP, Richard Corbett, 2009)

"The single currency... marks stability and growth and is crucial to high levels of growth and employment".
(Tony Blair 1998)

"Britons will come round to the idea [joining the euro] once they’ve handled euro money".
(Adam Boulton Sunday Times, 2001)

"Staying out of the Euro will mean progressive economic isolation for Britain".
(Peter Mandelson, 2003)

"The European Union must take a decisive step towards a federal economic government, with common fiscal policies and a larger budget, if it is to save the euro".
(Andrew Duff Lib Dem MEP 2011)

"A European currency will lead to member nations transferring their sovereignty over financial and wage policy as well as monetary affairs".
(Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Bundesbank, 1991)

The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community: the decision is of an essentially political nature".
(Felipe Gonzalez, a Spanish former PM, 1998)

"The euro area now represents a pole of stability for those countries participating in it by protecting them from speculation and financial turmoil. It is strengthening the internal market and contributing to the maintenance of healthy fundamental figures, fostering sustainable growth".
(European Council conclusions, 2001)

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(Then Greek Finance Minister, Yannis Papantoniou, 1999)

"The reality of the euro has exposed the absurdity of many anti-European scares while increasing the public thirst for information. Public opinion is already changing…as people can see the success of the new currency on the mainland".
(Kenneth Clarke MP, 2002)

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(BT Group Chairman, Sir Michael Rake, 2009)

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"I believe that, within the next twelve months, we will have averted contagion and stabilised the eurozone".
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"We cannot be members of the single market without being part of the single currency, the euro...In life, fighting for a minority view is sometimes dangerous and painful. But when you know you are right, and when so much of our national prosperity depends on it, we should expect our political leaders to act".
(Virgin Group Chairman, Richard Branson, 2000)

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(WPP Group CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, et al., 2003)

"A single currency, introduced at the appropriate time, will reduce costs for businesses that trade or invest across Europe...More investment in growing
businesses means more employment".
(Then BP Chairman, Lord David Simon, 1997)

"Joining the euro would increase our incomes and thus our standard of living...Now the countries of Europe have taken one more step towards making a truly unified market, using only one currency. If again we delay joining, we again risk falling further behind".
(Former Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, former CBI Director General, Lord Adair Turner, et al., 2002)

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(Former Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, 2003)

"Britain should join the euro within the next few years in order to enhance British power and influence".
(Centre for European Reform Director, Charles Grant, 2001)

"Joining EMU would offer multiple benefits...The euro would be good for jobs".
(Then TUC Secretary General, John Monks, 2003)

"As time goes on, people will increasingly see that there is a price to be paid for remaining outside the euro".
(Former Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, 2002)

"The euro may well come to be regarded in the coming years as part of the answer to saving the City from permanent decline. It was easy to dismiss the fledgling euro as a ‘toilet currency’ before we realised our own economic growth was built on sand".
(Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, 2009)

"Obviously joining a currency that everybody in Europe - including soon all the new European Union members - are using, a currency that American and Japanese and overseas businesses understand, has to make sense".
(Then UK Europe Minister, Denis MacShane, 2003)

"The euro, despite gloomy predictions from anti-Europeans, has proved to be a success".
(Former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, 2002)

"In reality the economic integration between Britain and the Continent is so close, and we have confirmed this because we all belong to the common market, that it can't be good in the long run to stay out of such a cardinal element as the currency union".
(Then German Finance Minister, Hans Eichel, 2002)

"There are no real benefits and some real costs to the UK of monetary independence... it makes sense from a financial stability perspective for the UK to contract out monetary policy to the ECB".
(Citigroup Chief Economist, Willem Buiter, 2007)

"Taking part in EMU would improve policy and performance enough to eliminate many of the strains that sceptics predict would emerge without the safety valve of devaluation".
(BBC Trust Vice Chairman, Diane Coyle OBE, 1997)

"The euro is like a breastplate that will become more and more resistant. The stability of the currencies within its area is without question".
(Then EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Yves Thibault de Silguy, 1998)

"The strict rules attached to the euro could emerge as one of the best ways to persuade the markets that we will put Humpty Dumpty back together again, put the public finances in order".
(Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, 2009)

"The question of entering the euro is worth a lot more to Britain than the wild anti-federalist fantasies peddled by those who think Britain should have nothing to do with Europe. Nobody of any consequence in Europe wants to create a federal super-state".
(Former Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, 2003)

The British Government Knew The Consequences In 1971

Foreign and Commonwealth Office 30/1048 - 1971

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government. To counter this feeling, strengthened local and regional democratic processes within the member states and effective Community regional economic and social policies will be essential.

Parliamentary sovereignty will be affected as we have seen. But the need for Parliament to play an increasing (if perhaps more specialised) role may develop. Firstly, although a European Parliament might in the longest term become an effective, directly elected democratic check upon the bureaucracy, this will not be for a long time, and certainly not in the decade to come. In the interval, to minimise the loss of democratic control it will be important that the British Parliamentarians should play an effective role both through the British membership in the European Parliament and through the processes of the British Parliament itself.

Test

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Patronising Electronics

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