Life Our usual taxi company (so usual they're actually on our BT friends and family) are throwing out the traditional method of shouting destinations through a radio for the cabbie to choose from, in favour of a Knight Rider Kitt style computer read out which targets the drivers closest to a proposed fair and sending them there. The idea being that the customer will get a taxi faster and the driver won't miss out on a fair which is in his area.
As a closet luddite, to me this seems like yet another example of humanity being removed in favour of a technology for only a token improvement in efficiency. On the cold mornings when the cabbie is in no mood for chit chat, that radio is the only breath of the outside world existing in that box on wheels. The one sided banter of the caller punctuated with niceties and arguments the perfect soundtrack as the not-so-scenary drifts by. With the new readout that will be gone, in favour of the humming of the engine, or else the seeping tedium of Local Radio with its 'pop music' and 'competitions'. As will the scene I once wrote for a script I was working on, in which the radio started talking to the passenger about where his life was going ...
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