Technology: Process Reimagined

I ran to the grocery store just before dinner, to get some ingredients for the main course: pizza.  I told my wife that I would call her when I was nearing home so that she could preheat the oven.

Bombing down Broadway, on the way home, I crossed Burr Avenue and decided to call.  I was a bit dismayed to have to interrupt Eugene Fama's reflections on efficient markets to do so, but I was getting hungry.  [shameless plug to highlight listening of EconTalk for Investments class!]

Rather than picking up my phone, pausing Russ Robertson, and then dialing -- something that is dangerous, even illegal to do while driving these days, I simply hit a button.

My left thumb reached up and hit a button featuring an icon of a person speaking on it.  

"Dial by name," I commanded.   My Subaru's car voice repeated back to me.  "Dial by name."

I hit the button again and spoke, "Marie."   Again, the Subie repeated my command.  "Marie."

I then hit the off hook button, heard ringing, and was connected.  I don't know what the bigger miracle here is.  That I could seamlessly call my wife safely while driving with the push of a button - or that she answered the phone.  In the end, the oven was heated, the pizza prep was expedited, and bellies were filled.

As today's prompt was "technology," I started thinking about how easy the carmaker had made it to dial and call "hands free."  Given our reading of Inside The Box, and the exercises we did during class at La Madeleine today, I started imagining how carmakers might have arrived at the idea for this technology.

I imagined Drew Boyd in front of a bunch of skeptical car designers.  "What's something that is essential to a luxury car?" Mr. Boyd asked (in my imagined scenario).

"Tinted windows!  Leather seats!  Bulletproof glass!  GPS!  Car phone!" the designers all shouted out, Mr. Boyd scribbling ideas on a whiteboard. (Imagine that this takes place in the mid-to late 90s, when cell phones were around but not yet pervasive.  Before everyone and their brother had cell phones, before nine-year-olds had Blackberries.)

"Okay, let's pick one.  Pick an essential feature of a luxury car," Mr. Boyd urged them.

"Car phone."  Mr. Boyd shuddered.  He was hoping that they wouldn't pick this one. After all, car phones had been evolving since the 1970s!  They were at that point of innovation called the "flat of the curve."  As good as they could get!  But he thought he would let the method do its work.

"Okay.  Car phone.  What if we subtracted it from the car.  What if we took it out altogether?" Mr. Boyd asked.

"You're crazy!  Ain't nobody gonna spend top-dollar on a luxury car that doesn't have a car phone!" one grey-haired exec with a silver flat top and starched white shirt exclaimed.  "Wealthy people, people of means, business people -- they need to make calls while on the road!"

"Okay.  Well, let's look around us.  Let's look to our Closed World environment.  What else is in a car that could possibly communicate with the outside world, that could act as a phone?" Mr. Boyd asked the group.

Dead silence.  Mr. Boyd tensed as this was the key moment to making or breaking his case.  It was now or never and if nobody came forward with something, he'd have to do it himself.  Not as effective. 

"Well, the radio has speakers," one blonde and timid young man in blue-rimmed spectacles piped up.  "You could hear the other person through the radio."  

"Okay!" Mr. Boyd nodded.  "That's a start!"

"And you could install a microphone near the steering column, so that the person could talk, transmitting input vocals to the radio," a female engineer added.  

Again, the silver flat-topped skeptic piped up.  "Okay, but what about buttons?  A phone cord?  Connection to a telecom signal.  How would you dial?  And how would you make and receive calls?  Ain't no radio that can do that!"

A chubby mustachioed engineer with gin blossoms on his nose raised a hand.  "What about cell phones?  Cell phones are getting more and more popular.  If we could have the on-board computer in the car, and the radio, communicate with the driver's cell phone, they could use it to make and receive calls!"

Again, the skeptic had a counter.  "Well then what's the point of losing the car phone, if you end up having to bring in a cell phone anyway?"

Mr. Boyd jumped in.  "Would there be any benefit of not having to pick up a car phone, in not having to use it to dial and call?"

"It would be safer," said the young man.  "It would be a lot safer.  I read in the Detroit News that just last week a man careened off the road and was killed.  Other drivers observed him dialing on his car phone just before it happened."

"True!  If someone could make a call, with the flick of a button, maybe people would want to buy a car like that," said the mustachioed engineer.  "A car that is safer.  More convenient.  One that didn't really require you to take your eyes off the road to call.  Maybe you could even speak the commands, since there would already be an on-board mic in the steering wheel or column."

The female engineer wondered aloud, "But how would we get our cars to speak to the cell phones?  Until we figure that out, we don't really have a solution.  It's not feasible."

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What might not have been feasible then, certainly was after the advent of Bluetooth technologies in 1994.  By 1998 the first versions were being incorporated into mobile devices, such as phones, and by the early-2000s Bluetooth was pervasive.

And maybe the team of engineers was able to finally make the subtraction of a car phone feasible.

And I was able to shorten the prep-time of my pizza.