Off the Grid

This column appears in the May 18 print edition of iTECH

In a recent newspaper advice column, someone wrote that she was planning her wedding to be an “off-the-grid” affair. Sounded interesting: I pictured a barefoot bride in a long hippie dress with wildflowers in her hair, a ponytailed groom in overalls and Birkenstocks, tying their bucolic knot in a field of native grasses or an isolated grove in a first-growth forest accompanied only by songbirds and a nearby undammed babbling brook.

Silly me. But then, I’m the flip-phone guy who writes a tech column.

What that particular bride-to-be actually meant by off the grid was that she wanted to bar the wedding guests from taking pictures of the ceremony with their phones and sending-texting the news to those not fortunate enough to personally witness The Biggest Day of Her Life. She wanted to know if that was OK.

You’ve come a long way, baby.

As one of the few un-smartphoned souls not in lockup, I’m alternately amused and alarmed at the hype — and flood of demand — for the latest symbol of conspicuous consumption from the geniuses at Apple, the Apple Watch. Trolling through the Associated Press news feed, I came across half a dozen stories breathlessly written on the day the Apple Watch was available for ordering. Reporters described the private try-on appointments, the eager tire-kickers and the watches themselves, which range from an entry-level aluminum-cased model to the Mine’s-Bigger-Than-Yours $15,000 showpiece with the famous gold case.

Interestingly, none of the articles explained what this thing actually does.

Which brings me to Detroit.

Detroit, the city on the rocks, the symbol of postindustrial urban decay, with its burnt-out neighborhoods, equally burnt-out auto pensioners and that hulking vacant Packard plant. The city once birthed a hundred automobile companies, thousands of suppliers. Led by Henry Ford, Detroit was the shining city on the hill in America’s brilliant mid-20th century as entrepreneurs and corporations teamed to produce a seemingly endless stream of the finest, most appealing technology of the time. No more, we moan; the city has turned to ash.

But wait, there’s life rising from those ashes. For example, there’s a company called Shinola Detroit. Shinola markets beautiful, straightforward watches, very cool handmade bicycles, handmade leather goods and other retro things. On the day Apple released its watch — and sold nearly a million of them — Shinola placed a full-page newspaper advertisement with a big picture of its watch face and the headline: “A Watch So Smart That It Can Tell You The Time Just By Looking At It.”

Which, presumably, the Apple Watch is too busy being smart to bother with.

The clever Shinola advertisement goes on to say that its watch doesn’t need to be charged every night, never needs a software upgrade, won’t be replaced by a 2.0 next year and so forth.

I’m sure this company’s Detroit workshops will never come close to the scale of Ford’s Rouge plant, and in fact, while Shinola says its watches and other things are “Built in Detroit,” that actually means they are assembled there from components made in lots of other places. So it’s a symbol as much as anything, one that says something about Detroit. It’s a city that knows how to organize and rationalize manufacturing; Detroit manufacturing thinks in hundreds of thousands of units, and that’s important.

The city and its industries have been a bit slow to catch on to the information technology revolution, but it’s starting to move. For example, General Motors Co. said last month that it is planning a major renovation and expansion of its technical center in Warren, Michigan, intending to attract Silicon Valley talent that will lead to new products.

The automotive industry is about moving things mechanically. But with the mechanical motivation end of things pretty much figured out, innovation is coming about through technology. Innovation has led to trucks that run much more safely and efficiently, and it is leading to cars and trucks that can drive themselves.

There is a lot of specialized information technology in an automated vehicle. Info-tech applications that have been developed to perform specialized tasks — such as advance obstacle warnings, lane-departure alerts and stability control — must be integrated with the engine, transmission, steering and braking systems. Autonomous vehicles — cars, trucks, airplanes, whatever — will rely on a huge network of sensors and processors working faster than humans can, taking in all the information a vehicle needs to make the decisions humans make when they’re behind the wheel, only better and faster.

Truck industry futurists see a lot of potential in autonomous trucks, which manufacturers say will be ready in about 10 years. With its back-to-the-wall spirit and growing investment in information technology applied to transportation, it looks like Detroit’s getting back onto the grid.