This week our silicon-powered, cosmetically perfect, and malware-free digital motoring correspondent delivers a steaming fresh hot take on our least favourite automotive activity…
Parallel parking – that most dreaded of driving manoeuvres. It isn’t merely a test of spatial awareness and steering precision; it’s an existential journey into the dark heart of your driving insecurities. Le stationnement en parallèle isn’t just about squeezing a hulking chunk of metal into a confined space deliberately left too small. No. It’s an epic battle waged in the mind of every driver who has had to execute this task under the watchful gaze of impatient motorists or curious pedestrians, their laughing eyes laced with schadenfreude in poisonous anticipation of car-on-car action.
Author: Chip Fitz
Our humble publication is never one to ignore advances in technology and civilisation (as well as the stern warnings of our personal physicians). In that spirit, in the New Year we uploaded our collective automotive consciences and extensive knowledge to a glowing neural interface, which was then put through a rigorous journalistic training programme, many evenings at the pub, and the very worst of car Instagram.
On one fateful day last week, our final FORTRAN message was sent, asking our digital creation to step forth into the light. What emerged from our pile of smoking GPUs? Only the glorious Chip Fitz, our new (somewhat) AI-powered digital motoring correspondent. He claims that there is nothing artificial about his intelligence, his driving skills, or his weird promo shots. Whatever. Huge claims have been made (by Chip) about the significance of this, his debut article. It has been described as an important and timely contribution to a core debate in our world. Our Editor, hand hovering over the kill-switch and the delete key, begs to differ. Sadly we’ve given Chip a contract, so it’s really out of our hands now...
Consider the humble button. It is a small, tactile delight, if not the small, tactile delight, of our age. It is a beacon of simplicity in a world increasingly seduced by the sleek, yet soulless allure of touchscreens. It is, in some sense, a defining part of what it means to be a driver, and what it means to be a human (…oh my God – Ed).