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In this episode I discuss the issue of technology, automation and human flourishing with my good friend Jamie. Enjoy! ✅ Become a $5 Patron at: www.Patreon.com/LeftFootMedia ❤️Leave a one-off tip at: www.ko-fi.com/leftfootmedia
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome along to another episode of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again and today's topic of conversation, technology, automation and the human person.
Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the Dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you. Before we jump into today's topic of conversation, just a quick reminder that if you're new here and you're not already a subscriber, please subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you're listening on right now. If you've tuned in a few times and you haven't given us a review, please do that. That all really helps the show. And last but not least, if you want a daily episode of the Dispatchers podcast, that's every single day of the week, Monday through, and you want to help support the important independent media venture that is Left Foot Media, then go to patreon.com leftfootmedia the link is in today's show notes. And become a $5 monthly patron. A huge thank you to all of our patrons. It's thanks to you that today's episode is made possible. Alrighty. So today's topic of conversation is about technology, automation and the human person. And it's a special podcast conversation, actually, that I recorded with a good friend of mine, Jamie Co, and we were recently together up at his place in the north island, and we were driving from one location to another and so I decided to bring along the portable podcasting gear and we just had a conversation in the car talking about technology and automation and the human person. And I thought it would be interesting to share our conversation as a podcast episode. Incidentally, on the way home from that exact same trip, we also recorded another conversation about the prison system. And so that particular conversation is going to be published as a special podcast episode next week for you to enjoy. In the meantime, here's our conversation about technology, automation and the human person. Enjoy.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Jamie, we're in your awesome weapon of a vehicle.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: You made the old Discovery One. The Land Rover Discovery One, Discovery One, 1998.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: We're on the way to record an episode of Whiskey and Wisdom. But I was thinking the other day about, actually I was driving on this road to your place.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: And I was thinking about driving, how.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Important driving is, and important as in, like, it's a good thing to drive or important as in.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it is important. It's a good thing to drive. Better than walking, isn't it? But I think the skill of driving is being eroded by technology.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: I saw an ad the other day for a car and the advert was, mum in this four wheel drive thing, busy with the kids, they're all screaming. She gets alongside the parallel park, press the button and the car does it. All parks are in and I'm like, this is nuts. Like these are skills you need. And I was thinking like this, push towards automation and AI will probably drive a lot of this as well. Vehicles will become self propelled.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: Do you think though that some husband invented this tool after his wife has numerously pranged the car and he's sick of paying the excess?
[00:03:32] Speaker B: I can neither confirm nor deny such things on a recording.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: Now this is true because my sons and I have been looking for vehicles recently because I have one who destroyed his car and he's older and he's got his full license and one who's learning. And I've always wanted them to learn manual, but trying to find a little manual is actually really hard.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I wanted Lucy to learn on a manual. Unfortunately we just couldn't find.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's sort of tidy and not too expensive.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, everything's automatic and like, I think that's a skill. Like I was trying to explain to Lucy when I was teaching her the basics of driving. Yeah, I was trying to explain to her how a transmission works, how clutching works. And I realized there's essential skills and also tools that have been taken away from the driver. So I told the story to my kids the other day we were driving on the port hills around Christchurch. Oh, actually the other day just before Christmas and I told them the story about how I was driving a friend's car and we're driving around the hills and I was very young and I didn't quite understand the mechanics of how to drive in the hills properly. So I wasn't gearing down as much as I should. I was treating it almost like an automatic. Really?
[00:04:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: And I was just using the brakes far too much and they went soft. Got to the bottom of the hill, roundabout at the bottom, busy roundabout, put the brakes on, they went straight to the floor. Nothing happened. Now, thankfully I had that good instincts to just grab the handbrake and use that came in sort of sideways. Everyone must have thought, what the heck is this clown doing?
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Stops at the roundabout almost sideways instead of pointing straight ahead. But the thing is that.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: And so began drift car racing in the crosshair show.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: That's right, exactly.
But I was trying to explain to them how that for me was a really powerful lesson in you need a manual vehicle around the hills with the advantage of it and engine braking and everything else. And when you drive an automatic, you just like, you forget those tools. They are there to you. When I drive a lot with our automatic car on the open road, I will shift up and down and my kids are like, why are you doing that? And I'm like, well, because it actually. There's a whole vehicle relationship that's going on here. It's not just me and the brakes or the accelerator, but that tool's gone. And then with each increasing sort of encroachment of technological self driving, the driver becomes more and more disconnected from the actual skill and the actual vehicle that they're sitting in.
[00:06:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, this is true.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: And I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I suspect not. And I know you pointed out the book why we Drive, but I've only just started reading it. Otherwise I would be able to. If I'd finished reading it, I could probably.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Oh, Matthew Crawford's book. Yeah, I saw that on the shelf last night.
[00:06:25] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: Which I'm quite fascinated in. But.
But yeah, I think there's something about understanding a machine. Yeah, I think there's something.
There's a freedom there.
[00:06:40] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:41] Speaker C: There's a.
You know, the machine is sort of weirdly, it becomes more of an extension of what you're doing. I'm never gonna explain it very well. I need to read the book.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: You know your limits though, right. As well. I think if you.
The more connected you are to that tool, that automated tool, whatever it is, whether it's a chainsaw or a vehicle, you know the limits, right?
[00:07:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: And if you. The thing's doing it for you, I think what happens when it doesn't quite work like it should? You get to travel on a road.
Do you know what to do?
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Because the vehicle's like, you know, normally controlling everything.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Because I think with.
You lose creativity.
[00:07:29] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: And I mean, in what way?
[00:07:30] Speaker B: What do you mean?
[00:07:31] Speaker C: So when a machine takes over a job.
[00:07:34] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: You can have something that's automated. And what's in that? The machine then just does what you've told it to do.
[00:07:42] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:43] Speaker C: So if the machine is in a factory line or a robot, if you like, is in a factory line and it's making a particular product and that's all it's doing. There's no room then for the genius of the human person to go, oh, we could adjust this slightly or we could make this better or worse, or do you know what I mean? There's no creative. You've lost creativity. All you get is just a punch, a single, you know, like a stamp every single time.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Like a cog producing machine. Here's a cog.
[00:08:11] Speaker C: But it never depends develops. The genius of it never goes past just what it was made for. Whereas humans really strive, like to continue to kind of grow towards God, if you like. And there's something in being creative. Yeah, that's right.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, like flight's an interesting one because birds can fly and they're pretty good at it. But we are even better than birds are, which is astounding. What we can do on a plane. It's just phenomenal lift capacity, speeds, all the rest of it. But now we're sort of reversing as the tech. It's like you hit a sort of peak apex, I think, or a peak, and then your technology starts working against you. So now we're going more and more fly by wire, which is less and less pilot involvement. Some airlines are now even starting to do feasibility studies into having a single operator in the cockpit. Like it went from three, I think actually might have been four originally down to three, down to two. And now they're talking about possibility of one. And even some are considering, could we one day have a machine that flies itself? And I'm thinking, okay, that's great. Until the fly by wire doesn't work like it should, or you've got a whole lot of pilots who have been trained under fly by wire and they get into a situation where the weather is not doing what it should, or there's some strange crosswind and you actually need a human intervention at that point. But they're not familiar with those basic mechanical me and nature and this machine sort of skills all working together.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: And so I feel like there's a sort of. It feels like we're progressing, but what we've done is we've increased efficiency. But is that the same thing as progressing? I'm not sure.
Yeah, you know, certainly not. I don't think it is in every case.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: No. And I wonder how much is that strange. Well, I think it's a strange balance between having a tool that is just a purpose, like a spade. Spade to dig a hole.
[00:10:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: But there are also tools that Like a vehicle that are really enjoyable tools at times. You know, like, there's a. The vehicle in particular because it brings a certain freedom.
[00:10:20] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: You know, like, you remember that when you first get your own car. It's like, where am I going? I'm out of here.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: You know, there's this.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: And you don't care where. Right. You're like, I just drive for hours around the streets.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Somebody told me it was so awesome just to drive to Burger King. So I'm gonna drive to Burger K. Yeah. Three days later, you're sick of that. But there's a free. Yeah. Strange freedom. There's a freedom with the spade. Freedom to dig a hole that you didn't have to do with your fingers.
[00:10:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker C: But, yeah, there's a kind of like the tool. I think we try to create a tool like a vehicle that is almost.
It just makes us dumber rather than really enjoying the tool as well.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: That's the problem. That's the nail on the head. It makes you dumber. If you as a driver don't need to think about the tool that you are operating. You are not smarter.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: No. That's right. You're not.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: If you lost something. Because you think about some of the old tools, like in carpentry, like, I still. They're. A plane is like, you know, I've got electric buzzer. That's fine. But I like the hand planes and they're not as efficient or not as fast, but sometimes they're actually better. They give a slightly better finish. They've got more control.
And there's something in the joy of using it. A sharp blade giving me a really nice finish on something that's more manual and less noisy more. And something about it's being more. You're more in tune with what it is that you're using.
[00:11:49] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Well, I think planing is interesting because you also get a sense. Now, I don't pretend to be the world's greatest DIY carpenter, but you do get a sense. I think when you're using a plane that. That's manual.
There's like, you know, with each swipe how close you get into that line that you're trying to achieve. Whereas I find when I get my old Black and Decker electric planer out, it's not quite as. I'm not quite as connected with what I'm trying to achieve. Do you know what I mean?
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: I have to stop and look a bit more because it's like the machine doesn't really. It doesn't have the same towels. It doesn't give me the same sense of, okay, how close to the grain am I? How close to that line am I?
[00:12:33] Speaker C: I think sometimes it's the, you know, I need the electric planer because it gets going to plow through the material really quickly.
[00:12:40] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: And I'll be so much happier with it because it's, you know, it's.
It gets a job done that otherwise would take me hours. And I'm not charging somebody, you know, more than. More than what the job is worth.
[00:12:53] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: But it's a little bit like. Or in my head, it's like sometimes your daily commute to work can be just as easily done on a train or a bus as on a car. And in some ways, a train or a bus is an autopilot. You don't have to think you're completely disconnected.
And you can almost do something else with your time. You can sit on your computer and catch up on writing, reading, whatever it is that you want to do. But there are other times where you need that engagement.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: Well, the engagement, not only do you need it, but it's. There's something. Something about being engaged that is very human. Like actually being aware of what you're doing, you know, entering into the movement. Like, it's very therapeutic to, you know, with machinery that's sort of much more manual in its process. It's.
[00:13:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: And I think the same with a vehicle when you're driving. And I haven't driven those hills around Christchurch, but I've heard this, heard about them, and I know about them. And there's certainly hills from where I grew up in Raglan, where you're driving tight corners and pushing hard, and you're chopping and changing up and down, and you're engaged with the vehicle. There's something really kind of very therapeutic about it.
[00:14:12] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: And, you know. Yeah, there's you. There's the road, there's the machine.
There's a completeness. Right.
Yeah.
A train's an interesting one because you get on a train and you are taken to a destination.
And that's great for a train, for a plane or whatever, but your whole life shouldn't be there. Like, everything you use should not be taking you through life. Your car, your toy. Do you know what I mean?
There's a profound human connection with. And also, I think, creation as well. When you create a thing, the question is, a tool becomes so automated. Are you doing the creation any longer when you use that tool, or is the tool actually doing it all for You.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. You become part of the communist agenda.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Well, what if you're like, imagine a world in which you're like, you know what? Because I think the next step in that process is we don't need builders anymore.
We've got a full suite of automated tools that we just program. And there's like an AI algorithm that is effectively the new supervisor that just gets on it work, gets on a building site and just, you know, runs an algorithm. And right now, here come the plumbing tools.
[00:15:39] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Here come the plastering tools, here come the finishing tools.
And you're like, yeah, is this.
Something's not right here. Like, there's an analogy that I've heard of in philosophy that I've heard. Like there's something different between a weight lifter, a power lifter in the Olympics versus someone entering a forklift in the powerlifting competition and the forklift cleaning up, you know?
[00:16:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Do you know what I mean? Like, sure, if there's ways. But there's something different here that's not. That's not the same at all.
[00:16:12] Speaker C: No, that's right. Well, there's no discipline, you know, there's no years and years of training. There's nothing. You haven't actually changed anything. There's no skill, there's no growth. That's right. You haven't mastered anything.
[00:16:23] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: There's something about mastering a tool. Maybe that's what it is.
It's mastering how to drive, it's mastering how to use the plane. And it's. So we've lost that kind of craftsman.
[00:16:38] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: That very human thing and knowing. I think it's interesting you see that I think too in craftsmen who had a real art and a discipline and a skill that was sort of almost multi disciplined, and now in many ways you sort of don't need to be. In a sense, there's a breakdown of all of that sort of artisanship that starts to happen, I think.
And like, in particular, like where I started, we were talking about vehicles and driving. I think there's something important, like what happens if, like everything's fully automated and you get in? And I guess every vehicle would be automated. So it's not like you'd say, well, what if the car you had one day, you had to get into a vehicle that wasn't automated? You didn't know how everyone's driving. Not that I'm driving. That's self driving, you know, automated cars. But I guess the point is what happens if the corporates or the state Decides. Yeah, you know what, we want to control people's movements.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: So you only get so many travel credits to operate a vehicle, do you know what I mean? Like we're surrendering a lot more I suspect than we realise with that kind of level of automation.
[00:17:56] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right, yeah. I think, yeah. Something that just triggered in my brain just then and then it fell out the other side.
Now I've lost it.
Oh yeah. I was thinking about how like part of the reason I bought this old Discovery.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: I mean I like the old vehicles. I like that you keep something on the road for a bit longer.
To be fair, it's what was in the budget as well. I couldn't afford anything newer but I really liked the idea that it's, you know, it's an early model vehicle that doesn't have a lot of electronics.
[00:18:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: And so whilst I'm not a mechanic, there are things that a lot of things I can do to keep this car going. I can fix things, I can replace things and I can learn about them easily enough. It's not to say I couldn't learn how to fix a Tesla, but it's a lot harder and the type of tools that I would need to fix that Tesla. So suddenly I've.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Well, you'd need automation, wouldn't you, to fix the actual car?
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe, but you'd have to.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: You need a machine, a computer.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't. That's right. To read the. A lot of cars. Do you. That's right. You plug into.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Here's just the other day, friends of us were staying with Auckland, he's got an Audi and he's had it for years and he's starting to have some issues with it and he took it to the, I guess the Audi servicing place and they plug it in to their machine.
[00:19:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Tells them everything.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: And the machine says $6,000 to replace. Replace these parts.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: He rings another mate of hers who's got. Who actually has a long standing experience with these particular vehicles and vehicles in general and he says, okay, that could be true or maybe if we just replace the battery.
Was it 70 bucks? 80 bucks? Whatever it was, replace the battery, Problem solved. Wasn't $6,000 at all. You see what I mean? There's a whole nother layer of knowledge and. Yeah, but imagine if your vehicle is such that you can't just connect with it. Like I remember my first car. Well, not the first car but I bought a 72 Holden Kingswood years ago HQ. It was a great Vehicle and I literally get.
[00:20:19] Speaker C: I think I remember driving that.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, you did. I think it was two tires.
[00:20:23] Speaker C: Kill switch in it, eh?
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And I had a Hankeep 285S on the back extractor. It was a beautiful vehicle. When I was selling it, I had a for sale sign. And I pulled up the supermarket and this guy next to me and his people mover with his wife and kids leans out and he says, you regret doing that?
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: And I said, nah mate, I won't. And I do. I wish I kept it. But anyway, yeah, I get home and I pull into the driveway, put my foot on the clutch and the clutch goes straight to the floor here. This bang. And the clutch goes straight to the floor. Those things are an old mechanical arm, not even hydraulic.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: And I get the old Buy some Exchange newspaper. $15. They were notorious. They had a little L bracket. So this mechanical arm went all the way through into the engine bay and then like an L bracket and then it turned right into the selector. I think it was whatever it was or the clutching mechanism. And they were notorious for sharing because a lot of the weight was on there and cost me 15 bucks. And I got into the car, couple of bolts unscrewed, replaced it, screwed it back up again.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Way I go.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Dream on. If you think you're going to do anything like that on a vehicle today.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: No, no, that's right. Yeah. And I think there's a loss of something like there's times that I, when I can't, I don't have the time or, or even the skill to even work necessarily on this car. But it's not beyond me and I can certainly give it a go.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: You can do your brakes.
[00:21:49] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Probably.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: And the part like you say the parts are out there and available and it's, it's kind of, it's within reach.
[00:21:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:21:59] Speaker C: Whereas. Yeah. I think talking to a friend who is in. Actually has moved on from mechanical work. But he was working in the Audi brand.
[00:22:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: And he was saying whether it's going to happen or not. But that they were moving towards essentially a rent system, which is what the world is moving towards, which is a terrible system.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: You never own anything.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: No, that's right. But basically you would pay your $90,000 a year to Audi.
[00:22:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: And every three years they'd take your car. They would only make their car last three years.
They'd make it high performance, tuned perfectly, but with that it's got a three year life. And they would take it away and fully recycle it and you get your new car.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: So pretty much zero servicing probably, wouldn't it?
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Zero servicing and a new car every three years.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Sure, sure, sure. And you will be happy you don't own it.
[00:22:54] Speaker C: But you don't really own it. That's right. And if you wanted to change brand, you have to switch out completely from this rent system. You don't even have a car to sell. As far as I could work out. Maybe there's. Maybe it's. Yeah, I don't quite understand how the system.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: 90 grand's a lot of coin too.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, he was saying about 90 to 120, I can't remember. Maybe it was more, maybe it was less. It was a while ago that I was talking to him, but the idea that you didn't really own the vehicle and it seemed to me quite a waste.
And these days, another guy I work with regularly, he's got an Audi and same thing as what you're saying with the computer, they're not interested. The mechanics, once they plug it in, they say this is wrong and this is wrong. They're not interested in saying, hey, we'll repair that. We will.
You know, we only need to replace this little part. They'll say, no, it's, we just replaced the whole, the whole thing. Yeah, with our, you know, it has to be the Audi part. But you know, you can't have anything that's not in the same brand line. Yeah, but it's quite an extravagant way of, you know, I took my van to my local mechanic who I love is an old school third generation mechanic.
And you know, one of the shocks was gone and he just engineered something up. Yeah, he said his first words were like, oh, they're a pain in the ass.
I'll do it for 40 bucks. We'll engineer something up.
And there he is. And away we went.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Well, that's problem solving. Right. And that comes from a genuine like a craftsmanship and a connection. And. And when I was in the security, electronic security industry, I was really, really blessed to actually learn from no skills whatsoever in this space under a guy who had been old school, like med electrician, telecom, before it was telecom, you know, worked the phone lines type guy. And he had electronics, electrical expertise. So it wasn't just he knew, red wire go in red socket, black wire go in black socket. And then if it doesn't work, oh, what's wrong? He had about 10 different things we could fault, check to confirm. And all these basic fundamental skills he taught me about problem solving that. Okay. So it could be the wire, could be the battery, could be this, could be this, could be this.
You know, let's get the voltmeter out, put it on these two spots on the board, the alarm panel board, to see whether there's a cooked resistor. Like a whole lot of things. And it was really interesting. I learned a whole lot of skills off him. And I would regularly find myself out on site with technicians, quote, unquote, who just knew the fundamental basics. And you'd get this panic phone call, you know, 5pm on a Friday night, and the alarm's supposed to be on that weekend. And they're like, it's not working. The product's broken. You know, I need a new keypad. And you get out there and they. And you just do a bit of basic fault checking that he taught me how to do. And you're like, no, you don't actually, you've actually, I can see you've got a short on the cable here. You've wired this. Something's wrong here. Oh, yeah, look at this. We traced the run back five metres. You put a staple right through it. You know, at some point, whatever it might be. But, like, I still remember that it was just, I guess he opened up a whole new way of thinking about and understanding your interaction with things in the world and even the world around you, actually, quite strangely enough, you know.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Because that's a transferable skill. Problem solving.
[00:26:39] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: It doesn't have to be an electronic security panel that's not working. It could be anything. And you say, okay, let's figure out a process to find out exactly where the fault lies.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah. And I think by having something that you can work on and get to know.
[00:26:56] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: You remove a lot of the fear.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker C: Instead of being. And also the slavery, like, there's the fear of, like, I don't even know what that is. And it doesn't work. Yeah. Like, oh, no, I've done some maintenance. I understand what that wobble is.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I plugged it in, I put in my USB cable. It's supposed to go.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Now. But then you can also be held to ransom, you know, you don't know.
[00:27:19] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:27:20] Speaker C: And so this is why, like, you know, these larger companies can go, yeah, that's a $6,000 part.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Because you don't know. And you can't fault check what you don't know. Right?
[00:27:29] Speaker C: That's right. You can't say. Actually, I could have just fixed that for $150.
[00:27:32] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: You could imagine if my friend had shelled out six grand or said, oh, that's not worth it. I'm gonna have to sell this car. You wouldn't get six grand for that Audi.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: And you certainly wouldn't get it in a state where it needed a six grand repair. But the whole time there's a lie at the heart. Imagine that you're trying to sell it to someone. You're like, look, I'm sorry, it needs six grand worth of repairs. I'll sell it for a thousand bucks or something. If you're lucky, you'd probably get there.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Even then you probably wouldn't. You almost have to give it away. But imagine that you, you said, Ah, 100 bucks. The person said, okay, I'm gonna have to spend six grand. And they said, I'll just try and swap the battery out. You would be robbed of income that was rightfully yours in that situation, you know, or vice versa. The person goes and spends six grand. They don't need to. Yeah, someone's getting robbed.
[00:28:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: I think in the end, like, it, for me, it's. There's something in it that's joyful. Like there's something that's.
[00:28:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: You know, like being able. There's a real satisfaction. I can't do everything on a car for sure, but there's a satisfaction in being able to do a little bit of diagnosing and a little bit of repair work. You know, there's a prudent, you know, frugality there. I don't have to throw away a lot of money all the time, but greater than all of that is just the joy of being able to drive a vehicle or to use a tool and to understand what it is that I'm using and to really kind of connect with it.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Well, again, when you use that vehicle, the less automation that it has, the more you are the one who is actually disconnected. Yeah. You know, what's going on, you're aware, you know what I mean? Like, it's interesting watching. We were in Sydney recently, a lot of Teslas over there for some reason, but I ran into a lot testers, I guess there's a bit of money over there. And we had this incident. We're driving down. It's called a highway, but it's not really. It's like a two or three lane thing in places and it's really sort of through city type suburbs, you know, and so the lanes are a bit narrow, but they're not uber narrow.
This person who's driving a Tesla, the vehicle. And I don't know if you've been in a Tesla. No, but I got like a. It's bigger than an iPad sitting there on the dash and it tells you exactly as you're driving along where the other vehicles are in relation to you. And it gives you a little warning if it thinks you're too close. So I could see this person was too far out to the right hand side because clearly they're looking at their little Tesla dash and it's telling them, you know, go that way.
And then we pass. We just passed them in our lane. Nothing dodgy going on, you know, just driving past them and they freaked out and they got an angry horn from this person because their vehicle had obviously warned them, oh, too close on the other side. And they just, they weren't driving properly, basically because this machine had made them too dependent on a system rather than the actual craft of driving. And one thing I noticed when I was in a Tesla was I.
That it actually makes you more anxious because it's telling you on the dashboard everything that's going on around you outside of the vehicle. And you don't really need to know that. I just don't need to know everything that's happening with every other vehicle around me. Like literally a vehicle that I will pass and within a second or even less, they're gone. And this thing's telling me where it is. It's like, well, I don't need to know that. I just don't. It's just a distraction.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
Does make you wonder why.
You know, I think I wouldn't be able to pinpoint the talk that I listen to, but I do recall someone saying, you know, the maths around, you know, most people spend an average of, you know, whatever it is, commuting.
[00:31:32] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:33] Speaker C: Half an hour, an hour, sometimes longer, depending on the city. You know, that's. That's time that could be spent stuck on a screen.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: And so, you know, by automating your vehicle.
[00:31:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: They now have. It's because it's sellable time.
[00:31:48] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: The worst of both worlds.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: Yeah. You can now get back on the screen and they. I mean, yeah, it's interesting.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: So you're stuck in traffic, but your time is now consumed by yet another thing. Distraction.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Which you think is your freedom. You go, oh, I'm stuck in traffic. I can, you know, watch the latest, whatever. But you're really not.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: No, it's a distraction. Your brain's like it's, what's happening is you don't have interior contemplation in that moment. Right. You're not stopping and thinking about the world or even reflecting or contemplating on anything, let alone high things.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: It's interesting because it would be. That would be it. Like, it would be almost dystopian, wouldn't it, where you could have jobs, where they say, imagine a future world, everything's fully automated, your vehicles are fully automated. So it's like, hey, you can own your own car. And it's just like being on a train, you know, so you still have that quote unquote freedom of having your own vehicle. So you don't have to go to the train station, you just get in the train and drop drives you where you want to go.
But the good news is, you know, you can now sign on with this company and they'll contract you to begin your working day in the vehicle. You know what I mean? But, but I guarantee you that company wouldn't say, oh well, that means you can leave working out earlier because you do half hour commute home and a half hour commute to work. They just say that's more time for us.
[00:33:18] Speaker C: That's right. Yeah. That comes with bonus. I have heard they are argument that in some ways vehicles. Vehicles have destroyed civilization.
[00:33:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: And that, and I'm not going to do the argument justice, but in that small towns and villages are destroyed because we now can, we can get out and go to another place for work that before was impossible to do.
[00:33:43] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:33:43] Speaker C: You know, you can live, you know, an hour away and you know, this idea of community, but it's destroyed local communities to a degree.
We no longer abound to the people around us. We can go wherever we want and there's a freedom in that, but there's also kind of a loss of something because it's the same, you know, we don't have to go to the church that's two minutes down the road and has all of our neighbors in it because we took our way a little bit past stuff with the, with the priest at the front.
[00:34:15] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: But we could drive another 15 minutes and get to the next church. But we have nothing to do with that congregation except to turn up on Sunday.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's kind of. You're right. There's a, it's a weird thing when you think about it too, in context.
Like you work an hour away, for example, where you live.
[00:34:35] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. When, when traditionally the bit of, the bit of thing is that the family were their own economy.
[00:34:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:34:42] Speaker C: You know that the husband and wife worked together in the business of the family, which is to work on the land.
For most people.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: No, that's it. The family was an economic unit prior to the Industrial Revolution, when we took the dads out of the home. And so when people talk about the trad wife, this is a big thing at the moment. You know, you're a trad wife and, you know, that's how you fight the system. I'm like, no, that's actually not what a trad family was. A trad family was the whole family involved in an economic endeavour. And they would work. I think we might have been talking about this recently. You would work till the work was done.
[00:35:16] Speaker C: I think Mary Harrington speaks really well.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah, she does, yeah. And Paul Kingsnorth is another one. There's a few of the others who've talked about this. You'd work till the work was done.
There was a lot more holy days there. A peasant wouldn't constantly be laboring away for the Lord. That's sort of a myth that we have.
And it's interesting. There's a whole fascinating dynamic. The Protestant work ethic actually wasn't as helpful as some might imagine it to be, because it then sort of made work a source of worth.
Do you know what I mean? And so it became an obsession. Eventually, once the religiosity of culture dies away, all you're left with is, my value is in my work.
But, yeah, your. The whole concept of the traditional family is not dad out of work and mom at home.
Like Book of Proverbs, actually.
What does the woman do? She makes things and then she sells them at the gates. Yeah, you know, that's. That's. That's a good wife. She. She's involved in economic trade.
[00:36:23] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: But we've got the opposite of that. Right.
So we've got people pushing back with trad wives against a system that says just everyone should be working for a corporation. Everyone in the family must work for the corporation. Earning minimum amounts of money.
[00:36:43] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: To buy increasingly unaffordable houses.
[00:36:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's definitely. It's a. It kind of.
You know, you think about the car and you think, you know, there's a certain. It brings a freedom, but at the same time it destroys something.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Well, and when it becomes automated too, it's like.
Yeah. Imagine a world which your corporate boss says, I need your work at 6am tomorrow.
[00:37:16] Speaker D: Yeah, you like?
[00:37:17] Speaker B: But, yeah, I Normally start at 7. Yeah, but I need you at 6 and I've programmed your vehicle to get you on the road at 5:30.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: And I know by your GPS tracking whether you'll be in your vehicle or not. And if you're not in the car on time, you're getting docked.
[00:37:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Do you know what I mean? And everyone. Every corporate's doing that. The liberal fantasy of choice totally collapses at that point. Oh, don't like it, Just get another job. But they're all down doing it.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:37:45] Speaker C: Which our freedoms have been. You know, like a lot of cars are GPS now. It's.
[00:37:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:37:51] Speaker C: And businesses do.
Some businesses use that as a protection thing and some businesses use that as a way to essentially spy on what they're.
[00:37:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: Employees.
There is a certain. I think there's a certain. It's interesting to me, following a vehicle that. Like a service vehicle or something that says, I GPS track so I cannot speed. And I'm like, yeah, I'm actually okay with that kind of a thing. In some ways, that forces a company to stop demanding absurdly dangerous levels of efficiency from an employee.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: Do you think, then to extrapolate that one now, should all cars have a GPS tracker that a police scanner can just go bling. This is last week's daily average.
[00:38:35] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: And we can tell that over the last three weeks, it's like a black box that sits in your car. He's gone over the speed limit nine times.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: I'd say no. And I'll tell you why.
A. Because I think that would be a complete waste of police resources. Time.
[00:38:51] Speaker C: Well, they don't have to do it. In fact, it's less. They don't even have to get on the road.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: No.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: You just go through, like, say, camera, and it reads your number plate, goes and sends a report through. And then they just send you a little.
[00:39:03] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:39:04] Speaker C: A warning or a.
Or deduct your bank account.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Okay. So second problem I could see is potentially a glitch in the machine, a gremlin machine that's giving false readings and you get pinged and you can't. How do you dispute. It's like, no, sorry, mate, the machine doesn't lie. So. And imagine the costly investment of trying to dispute something like that.
[00:39:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Whereas the version of gps, though, is pretty accurate these days.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: No, no, but what if the machine's not. Not reading you Right. Do you know what I mean? It's just not. Somewhere in the process, it's clocking you too early at a thing or too late or whatever, and it thinks you're Speeding, you know, and then like all of a sudden the burden of proof has changed previous. Like, at the moment, the cops have to prove, like, if you challenge something, they have to prove their machine's not faulty. Yeah, but burden of proof would shift.
[00:39:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: So then the other. But there's a bigger problem. I see. That's sort of incidental in some ways. Yeah, the bigger problem.
[00:39:57] Speaker C: But a business is alright to do that.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because then it would force. I think there's an advantage to the actual employee because then the business couldn't say to you, we told you to be at that job on time and you weren't. And you know what I mean? Like, you'd have to speed to be on time. It puts the employee at risk to do that. Whereas if the. If they're tracking speed, they can't force you into an Uber efficiency. But the other problem, of course too is there's a moral. Like, from the Christian moral perspective, like, okay, a speed limit is actually just an arbitrary imposition.
Like, okay, the speed limit's 100, but that's an arbitrary imposition.
A safe vehicle and a safe driver could do 110.
Is there a moral problem with that? Or you have to speed to save a life.
You know what I mean? Like, there's no moral issue there. Whereas the machine treats it like a moral absolute. And I don't think.
[00:40:54] Speaker C: Oh, sorry, yeah, I get what you mean.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: Safe driving is the absolute, not speed.
[00:40:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Now, I mean, 180 is not safe, but. But I mean 110 versus 95.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: Yeah, but that's right. As the machine only sees 110. But it didn't see the fact that. That you were carrying your. I can't even think of a good example why you'd speed but doesn't see the.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Trying to get your wife to the hospital, maybe.
[00:41:22] Speaker C: Yeah, something like that.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: Trying to get to a job where an employee's alone in a rural area and you think they might be in danger. You're trying to get there because you think they may have had an accident.
[00:41:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: And on that note, we've arrived at our destination, so that's the end of this conversation. So the moral, the story, I guess, is what?
Don't buy fully automated cars.
[00:41:43] Speaker C: Yeah, buy that. Buy the old cars if you can.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: Buy a vehicle that you are connected with in a meaningful way.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Try to find a manual car.
[00:41:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:41:51] Speaker C: Try to find something that you can do some repairs on.
[00:41:54] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: Something that also. I think it's good stewardship too, actually, I'm not a big climate change guy, but the stewardship thing makes sense to me. They keep a car going. Yeah.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Here's one advantage I can think of just to finish with. It might actually allow people with serious disabilities a lot more freedom. A self driving vehicle. Do you know what I mean?
[00:42:12] Speaker C: Oh, yes.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: That could mean that they could actually go places.
[00:42:14] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think maybe in tight cities where the driving isn't the freedom of driving, but the commute between blocks. Yeah, I can see that. The transport. But I mean, you've got buses and.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Trains, but you might be able to save a lot of money too, if your vehicle is so efficient.
[00:42:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I think, I think there's potentially a space for it, but not for every, not everywhere. It shouldn't be.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: The be connected with the machines that you operate and your human flourishing will be better. Don't be a cog in the machines process.
[00:42:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: On that note, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And we'll see you next time on the Dispatches.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: The Dispatchers podcast is a production of Left Foot Media. If you enjoyed this show, then please help us to ensure that more of this great content keeps getting made by becoming a patron of our [email protected] leftfootmedia link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time on the Dispatches.
