As smartphones and cars continue to blend it seems like phones are the technology, for now, that goes the extra mile. More than 25 years ago, Frances Cairncross, the media editor for the Economist, pronounced the “death of distance.” Cars have become the ultimate smartphone with their large touchscreens, automatic crash reporting, and collection of data. Phones have become the ultimate vehicle bringing us travel adventures from the comfort of our homes.
But both cars and phones have another feature in common. There are intervals when their technology gets stuck before it moves forward. Sometimes their innards will go haywire or the technology just shuts down. In either situation, it’s a brick. Occasionally consumers, of both cars and phones, get stuck with a technology brick.
Brick EV:
Consider today’s electric vehicle (EV) market. The 2024 models get similar range to their 2019 counterparts but cost a boat-load more. They are styled like any other mass-market sport utility vehicle (SUV) despite the design flexibility offered by removing their gasoline engine. This second generation of EVs copies the gasoline vehicle but does not improve on it. Future EVS will lean into better styling and travel further. Until then, hybrid vehicles will eat the lunch of EV sales, leaving lots of expensive SUV bricks sitting on car dealer’s lots.
There was a period when cell phones were bricks. Then they evolved. But because the product was totally new for consumers, it did not face the same impediments as the electric vehicle. Electric vehicles face the daunting task of being compared to gasoline vehicles, and the perception that they must be equal in features, or better.
Brick Phone:
It’s easy to draw a visual simile of the early cell phone as a black, monolithic brick. It used to be said that if a future civilization dug through the ruins of today, they would come across millions of these devices, puzzle over what they were used for, and make the wrong inference. Since the phones would not turn on or connect to a network, the baffled archaeologist would conclude that these innate bricks were a building material for homes or roads.
In hindsight, these bricks were a stage that cell phones had to pass through as the technology matured. An exasperating brick I used to own was the HTC Windows Mobile running Windows Mobile 6. This slab was thick and bulky, about the size of an iPhone 15 Plus today. One of its most memorable features was its penchant to randomly dial, without human intervention or outside force, the last person you had a phone conversation with. It was a predecessor to the butt dial. From a different perspective, the HTC was even more prescient than ChatGPT. It demonstrated how to stay in touch and nourish a relationship with friends.
Another prescient feature of this Windows Mobile brick was its ability to disconnect from cell networks for no apparent reason. Reflecting today, the phone was probably dropping calls because cell towers were too congested or too far away, but we didn’t know that at the time. The phone would suddenly hang up as you tried to type in a note or complete a call. Again, looked at from a modern lens, the brick was prescient and could help us control our obsessive habits with the phone. Like an ChatGPT life- coach, the technology reminded you to stay focused in the present moment.
Bricks as Paving Stones:
Many of these coarse brick problems got ironed out in future generations of smartphones. Those that did not, like the Microsoft Zune, got wrapped into a new product. But, brick behavior never completely disappears and is present in our current phones- they just make more advanced errors. Tim Harford, a columnist in the Financial Times reminds us that ‘the miracle in our pocket’ can inadvertently mess up travel when stored bar codes and tickets fail at turnstiles. In 2017, a brick-like feature caused another travel mayhem. Rental vehicles in Seattle (Wa). had installed locking systems activated by motion detectors to deter thieves. These motion detectors were confused by the motion of ferry boats, and disabled the ignition of rental vehicles that needed to drive off.
There are a plethora of other examples from the co-evolution of cars, bricks, and phones. The important take-away is to forgive, and not get stuck at a single point in time. Perhaps a few users of the Microsoft HTC product, more elderly users, forswore the technology and returned to using wall phones and palm pilots. They were not able to see that the deficiencies lay in the product, not in what they brought to it. When it comes to travel, contemporary electric vehicle owners who have paid full price for today’s SUV bricks might also forswear the technology. They will remember the inconvenience of recharging at slow speeds, and be angry that the trade-in value dropped in brick-like fashion.
Most of us learn to cast aside the bricks and move on. It’s better to see them as the paving stones for the future. However, as cars and phones continue to blend, we should anticipate that there will be more inert moments from “the death of distance.” Both phones and cars move us, but it is the nature of bricks to be the immobile counter force.