I am currently in the Napa Valley as a guest of Mercedes, driving the SLK 350 fitted with their new myCOMAND (not a typo just an unfortunately wrong-looking acronym) social interface system.
Johann Jungwirth, CEO of Benz R&D North Amercia walked us through the four social trends ID'd by his group as the keys to understanding the digital lifestyle revolution:
* the constant connection that means we are "always on";
* "Simplexity" - the demand for intuitive, efficient and aesthetic interfaces - the hallmark of Apple;
* "Innovation acceleration" as demonstrated by the disruptive business practices of some of Silicon Valley's best known social network phenomenons; and
*social networking and the ability to effect rapid change from bottom up empowerment best evidenced by the soclal uprisings in some of the Arab countries this year.
Johann Jungwirth, CEO of Benz R&D North Amercia walked us through the four social trends ID'd by his group as the keys to understanding the digital lifestyle revolution:
* the constant connection that means we are "always on";
* "Simplexity" - the demand for intuitive, efficient and aesthetic interfaces - the hallmark of Apple;
* "Innovation acceleration" as demonstrated by the disruptive business practices of some of Silicon Valley's best known social network phenomenons; and
*social networking and the ability to effect rapid change from bottom up empowerment best evidenced by the soclal uprisings in some of the Arab countries this year.
We visited Google - always a highlight! - and learned what it meant to be googly.....and with a couple of minor nav mishaps that are to be ironed out before the November launch and bunch of German journalists and I made it across the Golden Gate Bridge to Napa.
The concept of a driver being assaulted by facebook updates, diary updates, navigation inputs, video conferencing and a bunch of other informational inputs while steering a car through traffic alarms me - and the fact that technically savvy and needy San Francisco drivers (as reported by Jalopnik yesterday) have a 55% higher chance of crashing than other drivers in the USA suggests that we are already too distracted by incoming information......
This morning I plan to quiz Johann and co on how they work with the Benz passive and active safety engineers to make myCOMAND safe. Surely the answer is the Google autonomous (driverless) car? Do we want cars that are essentially mobile media rooms careening
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