I recently enjoyed watching some of this year’s livestream of the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It’s always a blast to see everything from early race cars to motorcycle sidecar racers, from Paris-Dakar race-winning trucks to the newest supercars. Suffice it to say it scratches some of my motorsports itch. Like much of the auto industry there are an increasing number of EV’s at the festival. In the last few years the electrics have begun to not just win Goodwood’s coveted hill climb sprint race but to set the course record.
In 2019, Volkswagen’s purpose-built ID.R took almost a second and a half off of the long-standing record set by a Formula 1 car. 2022 saw another chunk taken off the record by this amazing little beast:
While there is no doubt they had lots of backing to develop it, comparing the McMurtry to the Volkswagen is definitely in the realm of David versus Goliath. What people tend to miss is that McMurtry’s research and development happened in the context of today’s technology, not 2019’s. Like most technology companies they were able to take advantage of more computing power and more efficient tools and processes than existed even a few years ago. Battery efficiency, computing for simulations, carbon fiber manufacturing, EV motors: all continue to improve in leaps and bounds. Not just that, they were able to take advantage of engineering talent that knew how to harness those things.
It’s an amazing piece of kit from any way you look at it which is what makes comments like these so interesting:
These comments aren’t trolling - there are many like them - rather it’s people desperately holding onto the past that they identify with so closely. This is not too far from complaining about the autocar replacing the horse: as many have pointed out, it’s not like streets filled with horse dung were anything to write home about. People like the commenters feel as if they are being left behind.
A similar thing has been happening in the world of hobbyist drag racing. An off the shelf Tesla can now beat most of the field at a local all-comers race, and it does it without all of the sound and fury that people have come to expect in drag racing. All that money spent on turbos and superchargers and nitrous and giant engines just to be left in the dust by a quiet, unmodified, 4-seat sedan blasting Britney Spears.
Truly giant technological and societal changes used to come along at a slow pace: think fire, the wheel, agriculture, beer. The pace of change began to increase as we added governments, aqueducts, gunpowder, steam engines, electricity, communications, jazz, and so on. In our lives we are going to be exposed to an even greater rate of change. Lest you think this is just an article about cars, let’s look at some more things that will tear us away from our current context. Answering honestly, will you:
let a robotic surgeon cut into you?
accept insurance rates calculated by an AI? Mortgage rates?
fly in a robotic, pilotless flying taxi?
take your hands off the wheel in a car that has an autopilot?
accept autonomous warfighters as part of the military?
take designer drugs that are fully computer-created and work at a genetic level?
eat lab-grown meat?
learn (or let your children learn) from an AI?
watch news and entertainment or listen to music that is 100% computer generated?
trust an AI therapist?
trust your plans around the weather to an AI? (Hint: you already do)
visit your friends in the metaverse?
be accepting of a wider spectrum of gender and sexuality?
be OK with ubiquitous drones?
be OK with your friends and family replacing their cel phone as appendages with AR (Augmented Reality) glasses: never off, never fully focused on the real world?
Most of my answers are a grudging “yes”, although I’m loathe to take my hands off the steering wheel of any car and “ubiquitous drones” rates up there with “ubiquitous wasps”.
It is harder to change as we age. Strong99 asks the question “How can we not just live longer but thrive longer?”. We don’t want to be part of the “in my day everything was better” set like our friends above, so stuck in the past we are unable to see the value in any technological and societal advances. We must find easy ways to be ourselves in a new context, ways to separate who we are from the where and when and how. To thrive we must have at least enough mental flexibility to adapt ourselves to new things and still be ourselves.
I look to two separate examples here.
As a scientist in the 70’s my Dad used the computers of the day to run his calculations. FORTRAN, punch cards, the whole nine yards. His use of computing grew as the computer world did and so we had personal computers from early on. My Mom was a school teacher and already a good typist so computers were a natural fit for her. Decades later my parents continue to upgrade to newer models, tablets, and phones. They are not defined by technology, rather they use it to navigate through a changing world.
I also look to Buddhism’s adaptation to modern times. Its core teachings remain intact while adapting to scientific and social change instead of staying entrenched in ancient Tibetan practices. The Dalai Lama says
If you study the Buddha’s teachings, you may find that some of them are in harmony with your views on societal values, science and consumerism—and some of them are not. That is fine. Continue to investigate and reflect on what you discover. In this way, whatever conclusion you reach will be based on reason, not simply on tradition, peer pressure or blind faith.
Instead of relying on what was (tradition), it is this type of adaptability and self-confidence that we can use to thrive in the context of change.
Like electric vehicles, changes related to things like pervasive computing, personal biotechnology, artificial intelligence, scientific understanding of gender and sexuality, etc. are being actively developed. Each has the potential to improve a great many lives and/or reduce our environmental impact. Those changes are racing along just as fast as the little McMurtry Spéirling: we can either embrace them or be left behind.