Technological dependence invades cars

Technology is taking over our lives. Its marvels are a blessing and a curse all at once as people hungrily reach for the up-and-coming trend, while complaining at the same time about its intrusive ways. We've reached a point where cellular phones are practically appendages to our bodies, something you'd never leave the house without, yet we cringe when they ring in class, at the movies or while we're dining.

Since the outbreak of the e-mail phenomenon, the amount of communication we handle has increased tenfold. Our lives are consumed with what's in our inbox, in our portable compact disc player and on our PalmPilots. With every new advance we become increasingly dependent on machines to work for us and to entertain us, but when does that dependability become too much?

Recently, Congress appropriated $1.5 million in funding to JMU to research "intelligent transportation systems," wireless Internet systems that one day may allow drivers to access information about "local restaurants, hotels, emergency health care and more," according to an article in the Jan. 22 issue of The Breeze. This grant will allow the College of Integrated Science and Technology to research beneficial advancements that could extend current highway safety procedures, ways to track cellular phone calls made in emergencies to quicken response time to victims. Benefits like this would be phenomenal improvements to the current system, but other en route technologies just may be more than drivers really need.

In addition to researching emergency technology, the grant will be used to explore en route commerce as well. As if drivers didn't have enough to do in the car already, they soon may be able to look up and reserve a place to eat, a place to stay, directions on how to get there and more right at the touch of a button. Convenient? Maybe. Necessary? Probably not.

Accident rates are high these days, and adding to drivers' already distracted driving ways seems like a bad idea. After all, what don't we do in the car these days? With the invention of fast food, we eat in the car. With the advancement of electric shavers, we shave on the way to work instead of before we leave the house, we put on mascara at stoplights, and we conduct business transactions on cell phones. The possibilities seem endless, and now we're not just bringing technology in to our vehicles with us, we're programming the technology into our vehicles.

Automobiles were once a safe haven, one of the few places you could reach solitude short of yelling at at that guy who cut you off in traffic. Drivers would map out journeys on paper maps, have a destination in mind, reservations already made, and then they'd leave on a trip. The car was a place for quiet Sunday drives in the country or for releasing anxiety by singing to the radio at the top your lungs. With each new en route advancement we're losing the joy of the driving experience, and with each advancement in general we're losing our freedom daily, bit by bit, byte by byte.