Hammond tackles technology

This technological revolution... it's crap really, isn't it? I mean they had an industrial revolution, and real stuff happened. The skies were suddenly black with coal fumes belching forth from newly raised factories and trains and stuff. Weavers were released, blinking into the sunlight - what little there was under the fumes - for the first time in their lives, and used their gnarled, twisted weaver's fingers to operate, er, shovels and primitive robots. I might have mangled some of the historical specifics there, but my point is: where is today's revolution?

We were promised a technological revolution and a communications revolution, and these were going to rock our world and change our lives. Well, just what difference has ‘technology' and ‘communication' made to motorists? Sure, we can use the internet to find a second-hand car. But what dignity is there in tapping away at a computer keyboard like a pitiful, half-blind little woodpecker for hours on end compared with striding manfully off to the lav with a copy of Auto Trader under our arm like we used to do?

Yes, we can use the internet on our phones in pubs to look up facts and settle arguments about what year the Cortina stopped being made or how many engine variants the original Focus came with. But all of the facts on the internet, all of them, are wrong, so what's the point? The only people who knew the answers to these things in a real, analogue sense are long-dead or have spent so long playing Angry Birds that their brains have stopped working.

Every morning, most of us get up, climb into our cars and go to work. Technology and communications have allowed the car to do little more than act as a direct replacement for the horse. Yes, it goes faster, but we go further as a result and spend the same net time on the road as we would have done aboard Dobbin. The only real advantage is that it doesn't shit in the streets. But even that is being chipped away, as politicians and environmentalists are going to great pains to suggest that while it doesn't s*** in the streets, it does in the sky, and is going to kill us all.

“If cars are so clever, why do I have to look outside to see if I need a jumper? The car’s out there, it should tell me via my watch"

The young teenager I met yesterday, sobbing by the side of the road because she'd written off her dad's car, didn't have on-board radar to warn her there was a Corsa coming round the corner ahead, did she? There was no technology at hand to avoid disaster, just a cloth strap to keep her in her seat when she buried her dad's Golf in a hedge. A horse would have smelt another horse coming the other way and stopped. Probably.

So where's the technology? Why can't my 911 hook up via satellite and download a new throttle map for the ECU to suit my mood because I'm feeling a bit sad today? Why does it have to be driven, by me, halfway across the country so that a man can plug his laptop in and service it when that could be done online, on my drive? If the new Mercedes S-Class can monitor 74 different things about the driver to make sure he or she isn't falling asleep at the wheel, why can't it order my wife a birthday present and have a nice bar of chocolate and a copy of Classic Bikes sitting ready for me at the checkout when I pay for my petrol 'cos it knows I need a bit of a boost?

There are all sorts of cars out there for which all manner of wild claims are being made about being cutting-edge and technologically advanced. Well, if they're so clever, why do I still have to stick my head out of the front door at home to see if I need a jumper today? The car's been out there all night, why doesn't it tell me via my watch? They're thick as bricks - still no more advanced than the haywain.

Hands-free phones don't work, A-pillars still block the view, we still have to ruin a credit card chipping ice off the windscreen on winter mornings, it's still necessary to spend half an hour wriggling behind the steering wheel and adjusting the seat back when your wife has driven the car - electric seats or not - and traction control is still only there to step in when, frankly, it's too bloody late; it can't analyse you when you first get into the car and back off the throttle settings a bit 'cos you're tense and didn't get any last night.

I would like to make a case for the car, despite all the manufacturers' claims down the decades, being the piece of technology that has made the slowest advances towards the clean, safe, digital, pastel-coloured, technology-dominated, communications-driven future that awaits us. It is still an analogue great lump of metal, a simple machine that we must operate. Thank God.