dads can't fix cars anymore
In my parents house, there's a photo of my grandfather and my father together, in a (corny) picture frame that has "Dads are the best" in large font, and all sorts of pithy generic compliments in smaller fonts. (Think: "he can clean a fish", "he tells you why the sky is blue", "he teaches you right from wrong".) One of these has always stood out to me:
He knows how a car works.
Lmao, no he doesn't. This is relic of the past. Most dads in at least the last two generations have no clue how a car works in any meaningful capacity. If the car breaks, they're calling a tow truck or taking it to the mechanic.
This isn't a knock on dads. Cars are objectively orders of magnitude more complicated than they were when my great grandfather was always working on his. Trust me, I studied mechanical engineering in college and disassembled and reassembled several engines in the context of working in a research lab.
Cars are more complicated largely due to innovative technological advancements. The upside of these advancements is higher fuel efficiency and faster accelerations, but the downside is most people are completely incapable of fixing their own cars.
I'm not sure this is a worthwhile tradeoff.
I think there's an underrated argument to be made that sometimes it's better to have a less technologically advanced tool with worse performance, if it means that someone can reasonably learn how to maintain that tool without depending on a specialist.
(As an aside, I think trying to make cars more fuel efficient to reduce climate change impact is trying to solve the wrong problem. I believe that a better use of time and money would be to design human settlements to be not as reliant on cars, but I digress.)
A substantial contributor to these high tech cars is the integration of electronics. If you stop and think about it, electricity is basically magic. You can't see it, you can't explain how it works, and yet it can accomplish tasks that seem straight out of a dream.
Electronic parts are often smaller, more durable, cheaper, and more flexible than their mechanical equivalents. Great for getting more miles to a gallon! But again, they're basically magic. And most people aren't wizards specializing in the special electronic spells that makes cars go.
I'm not sure this is a worthwhile tradeoff.
In this particular example, if we isolate the upsides and downsides, I do think that the fuel efficiency gains from magical technological advancements in cars are probably worth it, despite making people less independent and reducing their freedom. But life doesn't happen in an isolated thought experiment.
This is just one of many ways humans are turning advanced technology from a tool into a dependence. How many people can get to the doctor's office without Google Maps? How many cool local events can you find out about without an Instagram account? How many restaurants can you even look at the damn menu without a pocket computer?
I'm worried that we're becoming too comfortable with our dependence on technology.
Either that or, maybe I'm just wistful that I could be a Dad of Old and able to fix the car.