Ford in-car advertising is just around the corner. Welcome to Hell.
Ford has been trying diligently, for decades now, to engineer automotive hell on earth.
They’ve finally succeeded…
Ford has just filed a patent in the USA that will use cameras to beam roadside billboards into your car's infotainment display - together with special offers and calls to action. Welcome to automotive Hell…
Ford, the company so concerned about your safety, here in Australia, that it recently phoned 1000 brain-dead bogans for a survey carefully construed to draw brain-dead conclusions, has finally figured out how to open the gates of hell, officially, on your car’s infotainment display.
Words there, from an official Ford patent filing in North America, from a person I would advise to refrain from further keyboard use. But whom, is suspect, would not listen.
They never do:
In other words, Ford wants to use the same tech that reads roadside speed limit signs to beam billboards directly into your infotainment display to distract and annoy you as you drive past.
That’s not, like, totally distracting, and it also violates one of driving’s few remaining joys, which would be ignoring most billboards to the extent that you don’t even see them as they pass by.
Of course, this gets worse: Because you’ll be connected to the cloud, you might be assaulted by ‘more information’. Current specials. That kind of thing. And if you’re logged in to your Google account, for example, those specials could be personalised in order to further erode your resistance to act.
I’d like to see some Ford wonk make the case that this is not inherently and unreservedly distracting, and therefore dangerous. I also wonder if you’d get to turn it off, or whether it’s an ‘always on’ attribute of your future Ford?
What is advertising, if not intrinsically distracting? The actual purpose of advertising is to assault you with a message you did not ask for and then indelicately request you take action upon it. Click now, kind of thing. Action you had no real intention of taking.
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How this might work
Let’s say you’re on the road to Dingo Piss Creek, for example. (If you’re not from around here, it’s like visiting Mecca or Mt Rushmore, but with blue singlets over the horizon, and the place reeks of ammonia.) Still a cultural and quasi-spiritual icon, however.
Anyway, after hours of seemingly endless busted-arse cattle scrub, towing your effluent in its aluminium box, you pass a billboard for GodBurger at Bogan Gate. A call to action flashes up on the screen: Next exit: Two for one Atheist Fries meal deal - but only if you use the code ‘bogan believer’ in the next 15 minutes.
I can’t wait for this. Like, imagine the effect this will have on the rate of self harm. (When you can no longer even escape into your car to leave the intrusive demands of the world behind.)
And of course, Ford will click the ticket every time some cognitively susceptible Muppet transacts, based on a ‘billboard-infotainment’ marketing nudge of this nature.
Flashback to 1957 - another brilliant Ford concept
Sixty-four years ago, Ford designed the Nucleon - a concept car, which, thankfully, only ever made it to scale-model stage. The car used a steam engine powered by a small onboard nuclear reactor in the bed of what we would call a ‘ute’.
You have to remember that ‘nuclear’ was not a dirty word, back in 1957. It was a shiny icon representing all that humanity might achieve in the future. Much like Electric Jesus today.
The Nucleon promised 5000 incredible miles between services - which is, like, 8000 kays for we metricated sons and daughters of convicts here in Australia - and servicing would be a simple process of just exchanging the onboard mini-reactors. (‘Just’ exchanging them…) Out with the spent fuel, in with the new. Kinda thing.
Will that be a ‘performance’ or ‘economy’ reactor today, madam?’ Yeah - they actually envisaged reactors in different states of tune.
What a pity that never happened. Imagine the backyarders embracing that. Shaving kilos off the cooling rods. And what’s all this lead? We can delete that. And the aftermarket industry - Penrite Rod Replenisher. Reactor re-map. Fission fortifier. Nuke+. Proton Pro Max. Endless possibilities there.
The mighty Nucleon. Stillborn in Dearborn, sadly. Could’ve been just like Chernobyl, really, only with a blue oval badge, and worldwide. Imagine that. Engineered like the Pinto and the Powershift.
What could possibly go wrong?
Next time you’re in Detroit, between pandemics, you can check out the Nucleon - the scale model in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. I’m not kidding. No reactor, however. Never got that far.
The Nucleon was also the inspiration for a car called the Chrysalis Corvega Atomic V8 in the video game, Fallout. There are even billboard ads for that car in that game. (And you still think we’re not really a simulation running in The Matrix.)
But this new billboard technology think you’d agree, is an even better idea than the Nucleon. Personally, I’m already counting the sleeps.
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