Cars and computers as media

As media, the automobile and the computer share numerous similarities.
The car represents the crown jewel of all mechanical media. In terms of electronic media, the computer is the car's counterpart.  Within each media category, the car and the computer empowered and changed the lives of humankind more than any other single example.

In terms of human history, mechanical media has had a much longer and more diversified past than electronic media. Mechnical media began at the dawn of history when the upright ape created the first hand tools. This was probably a stick which was used as protection, to kill prey or (as has been widely theorized) to pull fruit on a tree limb to within reach. Some have theorized that the first tool was a stone used to break open a nut or some type of fruit. Whatever the case, these were the beginnings of mechanical media. Later, other hand tools would  emerge which included clubs, knives, spears, axes and such. There would be domestic tools like hammers, saws, augers, plows and such. Then there would be weapons of war--swords, spears, shields, bows and arrows and such. In each case, these tools served as hardware and the cognitive process and will of the user served as software (instructions). After the invention of the wheel, a new class of mechnical media emerged. This included the human-powered cart,  the animal-powered cart,  the engine-powered cart and finally the automobile in the late 19th and early 20th century.

    "They (cars) suggest an absolute freedom, freedom that could take the mind to anywhere. They can go even where there are no roads; they can run over everything old and suggest a constant present. They seem like so much freedom but they actually are so much dependence. When you gain a car you lose a self....."  ~ John Akre (Source)

The car extended mankind's legs and psychology in ways he could never have imagined. Not only did the car serve as automatic legs, but it required no effort on his part other than maintaining the fuel level and serving as the software (driving, i.e. providing instructions) for the hardware. The automobile changed mankind's essential concepts of time and space. With the car, the world became infinitely smaller. Like all media, cars provided information much faster. By travelling over the next hill, you learned what was over there.  Cars provided this information much faster than walking or earlier forms of wheel-related mechanical media. Cars created fast-food restaurants, drive-in theaters, hotel chains and surburbia. Cars changed mating habits. God only knows how many children have been conceived in the back seat of automobiles. By the early thirties and forties, cars included all of the comforts of home. They had radios and cigarette lighters and you could eat and sleep in them. In short, cars put the world at the fingertips of the individual.

The first practical application of electronics as a media didn't appear until 1844 in the form of the telegraph. It was the  first time that electronic signals were adapted to the syntax of the human alphabet. The sequences of dots and dashes in Morse code was a metaphorical forerunner of the basic language of all computers, binary. These dots and dashes were the infant beginnings of the internet we know today. From those early dots and dashes would emerge a vast plethora of electronic media. The telegraph morphed into the telephone, the telephone into the radio, the radio was combined with silent movies to create talking movies and talking movies morphed into television (poor man's movies). While all of these analogue devices were evolving, there was a curious little device called the computer which was getting its own comeuppance. In 1926, the first transistor--later to be the the basis of all digital devices--was invented. Over the next forty-five years, that little piece of genius would become the first microprocessor in 1971. During the ensuing years, there would be hardware innovations in motherboards, CPUs, memory, cables, hard drives and peripheral devices. But all of these hardware innovations would be useless without software innovations to make the hardware do its thing, so in 1975, Microsoft was founded and the following year, the Apple I and Apple II microcomputer stepped on the computing stage. By the early 1990s, the pc revolution was in full swing. Words like word processing, browsers, random access memory, email, spreadsheets, Microsoft Windows and other words common to computer jargon were being heard everywhere. It is interesting to note how computers embody all of the other electronic media. A computer is a calculator, a movie projector, a telephone, a television, a typewriter, a calculator, a phonograph.. the list goes on and on. It should also be noted that, like the car, the computer put the world at the fingertips of the individual.

Computers, however, are changing human social habits and psychology in different ways that the automobile. While the automobile allowed humankind to extend his external space, the computer allows him to extend his internal space.

"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers." - Sydney J. Harris

Unfortunately, this casual observation is becoming all too true. It seems that as we meld ourselves deeper and deeper into the cyberworld, we begin to see ourselves and our psychological/biological processes as little more than another mechanistic replica of the cyberworld. Food we put in our bodies is input. Excrement  is output. Our brains are CPUs, our long-term memory is a hard drive where data is stored. Our central nervous system is nothing more than random access memory where processing occurs. Our involuntary muscular system (breathing, heartbeat etc.)  is the biological counterpart of ROM (read-only memory). Our hands and feet are nothing more than peripheral devices connected with cables we call arms and legs.  It's scary, but it is happening each and every day.

Just for fun, let's examine the John Akre quote above and substitute the word "cars" with "computers". It would read like this:

"They (computers) suggest an absolute freedom, freedom that could take the mind to anywhere. They can go even where there are no roads; they can run over everything old and suggest a constant present. They seem like so much freedom but they actually are so much dependence. When you gain a computer, you lose a self..."

All of the same characteristics apply perfectly.  As media, the two are very, very closely related.

Comments

[Jimmy K.]

and both are about speed. Faster, Faster, cars and computers. It's all about speed. Making a car faster means taking off things you don't need and adding things that will make it go faster, Same with the computer, you take what they sell you and then make it faster, by using different browsers, getting rid of none essential junk that takes up computer power.