MCViewPoint

Memory seats are nice. But how about mood minders? In-car sensors that assess your state of mind via eye movements, facial expressions, gestures – even your rising (or falling) heartbeat – and adjust the car accordingly?

Some of this is already here.

A number of new cars come standard with “drowsy driver” monitoring systems. Cameras embedded in the dash watch you as you drive; if the system thinks you’re getting heavy-lidded or distracted, a chime will sound and a warning light (it’s often a coffee cup symbol) comes on.

Soon, it’ll be much more than just a light and a chime.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the next Great Leap Forward was on display. In addition to cameras watching you, infra-red sensors will soon register your metabolic rate as an indicator of agitation and if the car decides you’re too angry to drive, it pulls itself over.

For saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety! 

Be sure to maintain a vapid smile of contentment at all times – like Winston in Orwell’s 1984 – though even that might not be enough if the car can tell how you’re feeling inside, something even Orwell thought impossible back in 1948, when the novel was written.

This isn’t a dystopian vision. It’s actuality.

A number of new cars know it’s you – specifically – behind the wheel. Not just Driver A. Facial recognition tech scans and identifies you – and then adjusts the seats and so on accordingly.

The car keeps track of your preferences – and probably also your opinions. Think twice about what you say because there may be more than just you and your passenger in the car – and in on the conversation.

Soon, everything that goes on in a new car will be open source.

And so much more.

At CES, evolutions of the tech already deployed were on display. In addition to adjusting the seats, in-car AI can also adjust the drive – mellowing out the suspension settings for more comfort if the car senses your fatigue, increasing or decreasing airflow to perk you up – even auto-shading parts of the windshield to reduce glare on you, specifically.

It can make recommendations about where to eat – when it senses you are hungry – and which route is best (according to its judgement).

All of this is being presented – spoon fed – to “consumers” (a contemptuous term that ought to have aroused anger when it oleaginously began to replace buyers some 30 or so so years ago)  as just another convenience. BMW’s i Interaction EASE, for instance.

Yes – but for whom?…

The autonomous cars which existed until recently were different because their movements were autonomous. They were autonomously controlled by the driver – not the car.

Nothing was monitored. If you couldn’t sleep and decided to go for a midnight drive, no one knew about it – including the car. It simply took you wherever you pointed it, as fast or as slow as you wanted to go.

The inconvenience one paid for this was having to adjust the seats oneself.

Be seeing you