Zoomi Life

As you all may be aware, I spend a lot of time mulling over the newly-emerging technologies of the eco- and alt-fuel transportation industries.  Sometimes to find out what’s coming or to try to predict what things will look like in a decade, two decades, or further out.  Lately, those thoughts have focused on the one thing that all of us most often overlook, but that is essential to the comfort we have in any vehicle we drive.

I’ve driven sport bikes, cars, pickup trucks, farm machinery, heavy trucks, big rigs, boats, heavy equipment, and more.  All of them have one thing in common: dashboards.

Without exception, all of the machinery and vehicles I’ve ever operated all had some kind of dashboard with gauges, dials, levers, buttons, etc. Some had more than others, some were bigger than others, and some were simple to understand while others seemed to require a PhD to figure out.

The various types of electrics, alternative fuel, and other vehicles are no exception.  Even most electric bicycles have a little dash board of some kind to show you remaining battery life and maybe your current speed. An iPod dock if nothing else.

Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking about this sort of thing. Companies like Visteon, which supplies automotive instrument panels (aka “dashboards”) have envisioned the future of the dash too.  They showcased it at the CES 2009 show back in January.  It’s a nice rendition and is close to what I envision for the future of cars, but is a little too binocular for me.

A little more traditional, while still being futuristic, is the Nissan vision of the dashboard for the 21st century.  It’s sort of a mixture of Buck Rogers and Star Trek with a little Hello Kitty tossed in for good measure. All it needs are some vaguely Christmassy blinking track lights, really.

Much closer to my vision, though this would be an interim step and not the final product, is the Futuremark 3D OpenGL dashboard of the future. Of the three I’ve mentioned so far, this one is the coolest.  Well, assuming you’re not into lolKats and are instead some kind of computer geek, that is.  The big Flight Simulator-looking screen is a little quirky, though.

My favorite look so far is the killer Delphi dashboard that was also at CES this year.  This one incorporates something I think will be essential to the future of the dashboard: a more “heads up” display of information so the driver can keep his or her eyes on the road.

My own vision is a mixture of some of the above ideas, but with a little more forward-looking in mind.

I think that the dashboard of the future will definitely have to integrate blogging ecologies while incentivizing user-centered folksonomies while also managing to tag podcasting mashups.  All of this will lead to currently undefined data-driven life-hacks that will reinvent Cluetrain and empower the semantic value of the heads up display.(*)

I predict that about two years after I’m dead, when you can’t call me on it any longer, the future dashboard will accomplish the above and look like the heads up display (HUD) of a fighter aircraft coupled with the awesome Flux-Capacitor-like sound system showcased in this car: