A recent trend with SUV, Minivans and other large vehicles has been the addition of television displays, usually for the purpose of watching movies. Today’s cars have several limitations that make that experience limited.
Number one, the driver. Cars, even those cars, only have one occupant much of the time, and watching a movie while you drive is.. not a good idea. An unfortunate side effect of needing a driver is needing a clear glass windshield. Theater’s are usually configured with one large screen in front of the audience, but the prime real estate for a screen is needed for the much more important task of observing the road. Ah, the tragedy.
Spaces configured for watching a movie, the morning news, or other programming would be a popular a part of a SIT model line. That means eyeballs, and while I’m not a big fan of the pervasiveness of advertising, or it’s purpose of promoting extreme consumerism, theater spaces entertainment is likely to be partly subsidized by advertising just like conventional entertainment. Also, some interesting opportunities exist unique to a moving vehicle.
Location based advertising could highlight stores, restaurants that are either nearby, or on the way. I suspect that would be a big hit with advertisers, and it may reduce vehicle miles driven too.
More interesting is a new type of entertainment that utilizes the surrounding through which you are traveling. The windshield could be translucent LCD used to overlay a tour display. It might highlight landmarks and history, though that would be fairly boring for a daily commute. Highlighting recent events could fix that.
It could be part of an interactive game, which is somewhat scary because it might get used even when you didn’t need to travel. Hopefully that phase will be a short lived fad, similar to geocaching.
Not every possibility will take off. One of the more unrealistic of which I’ve heard, is the cars based “social network”, which lets you chat with people in nearby cars. I can’t personally see any use for knowing who’s in a nearby car unless by chance they are a friend I’d like to catch up with, akin to bumping into them on foot. If I saw a friend nearby while heading to a store or some other non-time sensitive travel, I might suggest a quick stop for a face to face hello. But meeting new people just because they are temporarily nearby? Seems unlikely to catch on, and more likely that people will continue to rely more on where a person lives, works or hangs out as the location component of selecting new people to meet.
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