‘Net Gains? Not Necessarily

Like an awful lot of people who spend time trying to understand this sorry world of ours, and especially the new digital age of bits and bytes and microchips, I sometimes get discouraged. I took to computers quickly and happily some 15 years ago now, and for a while there I thought I knew where it was all leading. But lately? Well, let’s just say I feel like I’ve got a plugged injector or two.

Just within the trucking game, I hear so many new ideas and new ways to do old things-most of them based on the Internet-that our collective future sometimes seems a blur. It’s tough to keep up with the possibilities, even tougher to sort out the sure things.

And remember, this is coming from a guy who reads and listens for a living! Much of my life is consumed hearing people explain their plans, and a part of most days finds me at a keyboard surfing the Web to find out what’s going on, who’s doing what, who just ate whom. By virtue of professional need, I’m pretty plugged in.

So if I find it hard to match the torrid pace of change, to understand where we’re headed, what about you guys? Some of you are chained to desks and phones trying to keep the company’s head above water, while others are attached to a steering wheel for hours or even weeks at a time, trying to avoid the RVs and other obstructions. In either case, you just don’t have the time to do a lot of reflecting about these big questions, let alone any serious research.

But does it really matter?

I don’t think so. In fact, to all of you who fear that technology’s passing you by, that you can’t keep up, I say don’t sweat it. The truth is, none of us can keep up. Not even the very brightest minds among us have the capacity to take it all in.

The world will unfold in its digital way with or without you, pushed forward by Internet visionaries and software developers who may or may not be considering your needs. Like as not, they’ll be in love with the possible as opposed to the necessary, with the profitable as opposed to the practical.

Nowadays especially, there are people floating new ideas more or less constantly, but it’s often investors-not users-who are judging how useful they really are. That’s ass-backwards, to say the very least, and it’s creating confusion just as often as it brings clarity to our business and personal lives.

When did you last experience clarity, by the way?

Anyhow, many new ways of doing things are indeed real improvements. And yes, there’s a whole bunch of things we can do now that we couldn’t even imagine doing a few years back.

But let’s stay grounded here. What we really have to accomplish is simple enough and hasn’t changed for centuries: getting the freight down the road safely, undamaged, and on time-while making a fair buck. Anything that doesn’t contribute to those goals in a pretty direct way is a waste of your time and your money.

Which brings me to a whole spate of new technologies aimed at improving safety on the road. Things like lane-guidance systems, infrared night vision, rollover protection, and countless others. And the question is, are they worth having?

In a way, the industry has already answered that question, though I don’t much like the response. I’m thinking of the Eaton Vorad Collision Warning System and the tough time it’s had breaching the trucking market, especially in Canada. I’m convinced that it works, and considering what it can do by way of accident prevention, the price-under $3000-isn’t even slightly outrageous. Is it simply that money spent on safety is seen as money swirling down the drain?

If so, what chance does a lane-guidance system have? It may be slim, but why wouldn’t anyone want to be warned when he loses concentration for a moment and the rig drifts onto the shoulder or across the broken white line? Only if it were free?

But I suspect that lots of people-driven to fear and trembling by the onslaught of new technology-reject such stuff arbitrarily. I hear them saying things like, “I’ve been fine without it for years now,” but that’s not good enough.

This high-tech era demands an open mind on your part. No, you can’t grasp the whole big picture, but who cares? What you can do is cherry-pick the good bits. And there’s no shortage of gizmology worth the picking.