Val but a Cenobigbite @Valerie_Elysee@awoo.space

driving feels great.
I feel support on my back, I feel motion, and energy,
I feel a connection to the world. and I feel anticipation, working to break the engine in with due diligence and ritual, trying to care for this thing which listens to me. which doesn't just tell me I don't matter, which enhances and resonates with my hope, my excitement, my joy, which appreciates me taking the time to understand it, and rewards me with increased agency.
it helps me find sunsets.
It helps me see the world.

In a life full to the brim with hundreds of millions of people who are perfectly nice and good but literally, could not give a _fucking shit_ this thing revels in and participates in my happiness. This thing will go on adventures with me.
When nobody else will.

It will outlive me if all goes well.

It's a destination that is also participatory in the journey. It is a functioning, moving, embodiment of the dreams and designs of so many people who put hands on it and built it, offering up parts of their own lives, to bring you something that makes yours easier. And to do so in a manner and style which expresses the spirit and constraints of the age and the creators. Where engineering acquires a distinct and palpable, and accessible form of artistic expression ranging from visual artists, to metallurgists, to writers, to acoustic scientists.
There is SO much that goes into a car, and the more we build that removes us from the experience of driving, the less inclined we are to feel or appreciate that you're literally sitting in and touching a dream.

Interoperability, has the side effect of ablating the unique, Growing increasingly interchangeable with every other technological interaction, As a small but sentimental example:

Keys.
Like Physical keys.
How many things do you own that are operated with a physical key?
Heck, even the physical key has had its own unique ritual too;
you don't leave house keys dangling in the lock while you're home, after all. This little ritual stood pretty close to on its own as an act, indicating the start of something.
But now in the name of creature comfort, in the name of convenience, we've opted away from this tiny unique ritual, And it's silly, really I know, but, There's something weird, about the sensation that I start my car now just like I do my laptop, cellphone, PS4, TV, wireless headset, and Mr Coffee. instead of as one would open a treasure chest.
(If anything we should be definitely starting the Mr. coffee maker with a key too as a sign of reverence, but that's a discussion for another time.)

And just to allay accusations of curmudgendom, I actually really do like the way the new trend of Personal Area Network fob reacts to hands by unlocking, that can stay, that feels rad. But I think Aston Martin's Crystal "Emotional Control Unit" Key-and-fob was probably the coolest manifestation of push buttons starts ever, and I'm sad it wasn't more widely adopted.

Cars reify the dreams of designers, the hopes and aspirations of people that range from various goals some blase and ho-hum,
Some defiant, bore the determination of an economic system on shoulders, that could not hold it, and are beloved also-rans, like the trabant.
Some confident and bearing the hope of recovery from devastation and mass murder like the Mini The Jeep, and The Beetle. (the first beetles were offered only in one color "wolfsburg black" which was left-over blackout paint from the war.) Some carry the dream of an artist to heights and acknowledgement that were unfairly denied them by nationalism and racism, like Pagani.

and I see this beauty and find no way to communicate this joy, and the importance of understanding the act of motoring as self actualizing. and I feel deeply conflicted, because we're handing off labor to our kids while devaluing it ourselves. We're exchanging this action, for yet another form of passivity and consumption, rather than a generative engagement; something that asks more of you than just your eyeballs and ability to sit still. we're creating spaces for yet more uncurated or curated-for-us-not-by-us media to enter and engage, and that's not a phenomenon that's new, just, significantly expanded with the advent of infotainment systems instead of just AM talk radio.

But as I mentioned the dreams of engineers, to build characteristics and behaviors, to create senses and sensation, are you aware of them? some of them you've learned but may not be conscious of them. Catch yourself in which way you lean when the transmission kicks down. feel the way your steering wheel sits in your hands, Have you found spots worn in it from your grasp? Can you take the time to notice the manifestations of your journey in this machine? Perhaps some marks may hold fond or sad memories too?

These machines intersect with us, Equal parts Armor, Raiment, Shelter, Companion and Steed.
We complement and complete one another.

To wax futurist for a moment:

These things are beautiful, These things, more than anything, I feel, are our children, as a species.
we may build AI, but they're a recent addition, and the first truly widespread bodies they'll inhabit that move and work in the world as _We_ do, won't even be our own bipedal feet, it'll be cars.
They're the best hope I have that AI might take mercy on us and see that we're capable of love apart, integrative but distinct.