== Talkin' To The Steering Wheel = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

When everyday tech is nearly identical to magic, why don't our little bodies explode?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2007/05/11/notes051107.DTL&nl=fix

So there I was, happily cruising along Interstate 80 coming down from the Sierra and doing about 85 mph just like almost everyone else except a few rusty old Tercels and some creaky motor homes and of course the slew of cold-hearted, machine-like CHP officers waiting calmly for me at the speed trap just up ahead. But never mind that now.

My car calmly reported an outside May temperature of a scant 35 degrees and the surrounding mountains were still licked by a soft glaze of snow and I believe I was blasting a terribly cool song from the incredible new Kings of Leon CD, just one of a 350-song super road-trip megamix I had compiled a few days prior from the roughly 6,579 songs stored on my MacBook Pro which I had then effortlessly transferred to a tiny shiny Cupertino-designed slab of black plastic and silicon roughly the size of a pack of Camel Reds, a device that can easily hold every song I would ever want to listen to ever and it was plugged into a tiny socket somewhere in my glove box and all was good with the world, when just then the steering wheel rang.

Or, to be more specific, my cell phone rang, but the sound came straight through the car's stereo system which centered the sound right in front of my face which made it feel like it was coming from the steering wheel because, well, this is apparently how it works, my tiny Motorola SLVR magically communicating with the car via invisible brain-melting Bluetooth waves and hence whenever I'm driving and I get a phone call the entire interior of the car rings sweetly and I press a little button on the stalk and then speak directly toward the steering wheel, where the little microphone is, and it's both amazing and cool and still more than a little weird.

So then. The steering wheel rang. The Kings fell silent. The iPod waited calmly. I pressed the answer button and heard a long-distance voice say, "Hello," and suddenly the world collapsed and time and space and distance lost almost all meaning as roughly 500 different technological marvels fell into place in the span of roughly 1.2 seconds. ...

[onethatcares]

1. wow n/t

mt

[silverweb]

2. Was wondering when this would show up.

One of Mark's best. I loved it and sent it to everyone on my list.

We could all use more awe and wide-eyed wonderment in our lives.

[madokie]

3. He does have a way with words,

does he not

[silverweb]

4. That he does!

Love him!

:loveya:

[baldguy]

5. This read like some of the better '50s pulp sci-fi stories.

But its all real.

[madokie]

6. twilight zone