Anyway, while I was out running Moogie's errands I saw the most gorgeous classic car for sale. An ancient white Ford Fairlane convertible (tailfins and all; at first I thought it was a Falcon, but it's amazing what you can research on the web) with a nearly perfect body on it, down to the chrome. I wanted to cry when I saw it.

What is it with me wanting an old car? I have no idea. One thing with older cars is that they had panache, whereas all the cars since about 1985 have all been... well, bland. They look like larger or smaller versions of each other. An older car can compliment your personality, because they have one.

On the other hand, old cars are... old. This car was luxurious and well-equipped... almost forty years ago.

So I considered what I'd want to do to it:

• Replacement of the engine and transmission to something from... oh, the nineties; perhaps a 5.0 liter fuel injected engine and four speed automatic.

• I lay you money that these things didn't offer tilt wheels. I want a tilt wheel.

• Power everything. Brakes, steering, windows, seats, locks, mirrors... everything. Sorry, I'm spoiled that way.

• Two words: air conditioning.

• Replacement of the generally stock vinyl interior with cloth and velour (I don't like leather interior that much, but I despise vinyl car interiors).

• Replacement of all dashboard systems to something modern, perhaps digital, with LCD readouts with different configurations for each driver (sort of like "skins" for the dashboard instrument panel), etc.

• An keying system with multiple keys, so that drivers are identified by which key is inserted into the ignition. From this information, the car could adjust the mirrors, seats, wheel, radio stations, dashboard configuration, touchscreen controls, etc.

• Some sort of independent navigation system, using GPS and maps would be ideal. (I get lost, but like most guys, I hate asking for directions.)

• An integrated audiovisual system with cassette, CD, DVD and ability to play .mp3s audio and various video formats (Realmedia, .avi, Quicktime, .mpeg, .mp4). Being able to display TV on a screen in the front and back would be nice.

• Although technically illegal, microbroadcasting from the car would be nice for times when I'm away from the car yet near it (listening to .mp3s on a portable radio while walking at the park, for instance). (Also, it'd be kind of funny to be in an ancient, high-tech Ford Fairlane being a mobile pirate station and data haven. [grin])

• Since to run a lot of that would require serious computer support and disk storage, I would want at least a single computer in the car. More likely, a couple to do display and encoding/decoding of streams, and a file server, all networked using at least one standard 100 megabit ethernet network hookup.

  I choose to do computers instead of embedded systems simply because I'm more familiar with software than hardware. (I mean, really, it's like this: build custom hardware. Find a bug and cry. Now, build custom software. Find a bug. Fix it and reinstall (assuming it's not burned to PROMs of some sort). The generic, microcomputer-based hardware costs more, but it allows expandability and adaptability that specialized hardware doesn't offer.)

• Some sort of networking wherever I park the car, be it hardwired (a network jack on the outside of the car to connect to the house network when you get home, and plugging the car in to recharge the backup batteries) or a network connection over radio. I guess the garage would be like the cradle of a Palm Pilot, hotsyncing the car with the home network, updating software, loading new music and video, updating maps, downloading logs (travel, security, in-car audio for dictation, etc.), and so forth.

• You don't think I'm putting this together without installing a serious alarm system, do you? Shoot, if it starts up under suspicious circumstances, I want it to page me or something. Or phone the police and report its position to them continuously (a la BEHEMOTH). Too bad it'd be illegal to make the car protect itself by force.

  (When Steve Roberts and BEHEMOTH came to the University of Houston in '94 I got to see him (I only heard about it a half hour before the presentation started, and made a beeline for the University Center to take a gander. I'd seen him on TV before, in fact, so that's why I wanted to see so badly; I think it was on the Donahue show). It was too cool. That really was an amazing machine. It really got my juices flowing for ideas on augmentation without having to strap yourself to your devices providing the augmentation. Instead, you can haul a vehicle around with you, and although this isn't an idea solution for a lot of reasons, it is acceptable for a number of technologies.)

It's almost a "trans-car," in the sense of a human with respect to a transhuman; an ancient body with new, more efficient, vastly improved functionality. It's the same, but it's not the same. It's improved, it's mean, it's technologically savvy.

Granted, this would be extremely expensive, but I think it'd be worth it. It would be fun, and it'd be the perfect mix of style and substance.

What I drive now, a '91 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham, is definitely substance. It's stable, even after almost 130,000 miles (knock on wood profusely). I rammed it into a wall and after body work it's fine. But it's transportation to me, and that's about it.

Now don't get me wrong - it's a nice car. It's comfortable, and it's really nice-looking if I'd ever get enough energy to keep the outside washed and waxed (I ought to, I got a hand-lacquer paint job on it after the wreck) and clean the inside out.

It's definitely not style (anymore). It's an older body style, so it's not "modern" anymore. It's almost a "grandpa car," as I put it, although after I got it some people I worked with told me that it was "the pimp daddy ride." (Thanks a lot!)

Consider this in relation to somebody who always drives some new shiny piece of plastic crap car that is ready to turn into the nearest junkyard after 50,000 miles, or whatever the new fad is (the ones I've been old enough to be subjected to include the late '80s Mustang styling, the Mazda Miata and now the new Volkswagen Beetle (even though I'd like one of these, in Turbonium green, I can be a sellout too!), or what have you). They're into style more than substance.

But I want to strike that balance.

I think the whole argument goes back to the idea of what technology is, and what it means to people who immerse themselves in it.

Technology is, at its base, to augment a human in some way. Technology makes us stronger, faster, more agile, smarter, or stands in for us when we don't want to do something else. It's an extension of our abilities. It exists to serve.

I stated before that when I am away from home, I feel disconnected. I also feel unaugmented. I lose my connection to the machines and books that contain some of my externalized knowledge and consciousness. My effective intelligence goes down when I lose the power that these technologies give me.

If I could pack this technology with me, then my effective intelligence over time stays higher. I need a more effective, fuller-time existence in cyberspace.

Thus, one place I would like to extend it: my vehicle, and the space immediately surrounding it (running on battery power, only spinning up high-power devices like disks as needed, and communicating through HF radio or cellular connections with me when I'm away from it).

Also, in the circles that I travel in, regardless of the physical style of the vehicle that one drives, the technology at the root of such a vehicle would project a certain style, itself.

Thus, the cachet of such a project.

You never know with me. I might start actually start a website on this. Of course, if I do that, I need to start one on my roughly parallel idea on building a house with many of the same properties.

Would it be blasphemous to hack a classic car in this manner? To some people, surely. But I suppose if I buy it I guess it's mine, and thus I can do whatever I damned well please to it (the "I bought this flag, so I can burn it if I want" philosophy). Anyway, think about it as the Six Million Dollar Man rather a piece of art: "we can make it faster, smarter, use up a lot more power..."

However, what would suck would be a shame to do it, try to install systems like this, and really screw it up in the process. In theory, it'd be a good idea to do this in another car that if you kind of screw bits and pieces up here and there you just chalk it up to a learning experience.

Would it be ridiculous to try to build something like this in an old Volkswagen bug? They're relatively cheap and parts can be readily had. Then again, most of them I've been shook my teeth loose standing still when running, not an ideal environment for disk storage.

In theory, if I ever get my blood money from the IRS then I could buy a new car (a plastic piece of crap [grin]) and hack my Olds. If I change the springs and get new shocks it'd be stable driving, and the engine is relatively smooth for one as well-used as it has been (plus, if the major components of the computers are placed in the trunk then they won't be as effected by the vibrations, unless they translate through the exhaust system, as I suspect they may, being largely dissipated in the muffler, meaning it'd be a source of vibration, too).

Not sure. It requires more study, for sure, but any way you slice it, it's an interesting project idea.

Of course, the fatal flaw is that any car maker worth its salt could beat me to market with anything I could come up with for a fraction of the cost. I think the root of the idea, though, isn't that I want a really cool, decked-out car.

I think the key is that I want intelligence embedded in the environment. Right now, my environment is dumb; it's just inanimate chunks of matter. There's no smarts there.

If the environment around me was intelligent, though, and could rearrange itself as I would like, bring me information, make proxy decisions for me... then I would have a system that I could begin using to amplify my effective intelligence.

restlessmind