Don't worry, Apple is the sober driver tonight.

A few days ago, some scientists in Germany unveiled a car, called MadeInGermany (MIG). It's like any other car, except for the sensory camera on the roof. Oh, and the fact that it can drive itself.

At the call of a smart phone, these cars can use GPS to find their owners or potential taxi fares, drive to them, and navigate their own way to the person's home.

These cars apparently have the potential to reduce traffic in Berlin to one-fifth of what it is now, because the cars will be able to plan their journeys to pick up several users headed in the same direction.

Back in the day cars that could drive themselves were cool and mischevious like Brum, or murderous and terrifying like Christine but now it seems to be a reality, who knows what to think. Its great in a way, because the main cause of car crashes is human error, but also very worrying because it puts corporations like Apple and Google in direct control of a pretty significant part of daily life.

I wonder if, like the taxi drivers in Bali who take their fares to stores owned by their family, these cars will casually drive you home via Apple outlets, or stop at a store and refuse to drive until you buy it a personalised Apple license plate.

Ok, probably not.

But if these cars are hooked up to our smart phones, the technology to alert them to favourite eateries, stores and facebook friends as it drives you past is definitely there. New media and technology interacting in ways like this definitely has potential, and the ability to take control from some humans while driving (I'm looking at you, grandad) may turn out to be very good for road safety.

Also, the techno nerd within is kind of excited to one day be able to issue my car instructions like KIT on Knight Rider. Come on, how cool would that be?

Jobs for the (Play)boys

Yes, I'm a frustrated headline writer. Anyway, apropos of this week's topic, here's an interesting piece on the rather awkward way in which squeaky-clean Apple and squeaky-but-not-so-clean Playboy have come to a mutual arrangement for the iPad.

Religion of Apple + iPhone

Excellent piece about the "Religion of Apple" and the 'Jesus' mysticism associated w/the iPhone.

Note: You'll need to be logged in @the Uni (or the library proxy) to access this to save and/or print

Marketing prof Russell Belk of York University and Gulnur Tumbat of San Francisco State study the parallels between Apple's fanbase and the followers of religion, assembling a framework for Apple's mystical mythology. They believe the entire Apple brand is based on four key myths. Heidi Campbell, a scholar at Texas A&M aggregated their work for a recent article

"How the iPhone became divine"

Here are Campbell's four key "myths" about Apple:

1. a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment
2. a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world
3. a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;
4. and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company...

Abstract: This article explores the labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ in order to demonstrate how religious metaphors and myth can be appropriated into popular discourse and shape the reception of a technology. We consider the intertextual nature of the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology and demonstrate how this creates a unique interaction between technology fans and bloggers, news media and even corporate advertising.