The blessing of technology (Might include satire ;-))

Have you ever noticed it? We Germans are obsessed with technology. Everything has to be technically absolutely perfect.

futuristic ideas - IAA 2019...

Take a German mid-range car. No one is overwhelmed by a window crank anymore. Electric windows save the occupants from wasting time by cranking. It is almost incidental that the "time saver" drains the battery overnight now and then. Once the three-tonner has been pushed up the garage driveway, it can be pushed almost without difficulty, as long as an automatic transmission or a Tiptronic does not stand in the way of the morning endeavour.

A highlight for the coarse motorist: folding road maps is obsolete. The car knows the way home.

Inside, the driver catches a cold at a pleasant twenty degrees, while outside the asphalt melts in the sun. The suspension adjustment can be raised eighty centimetres because the innovative commuter constantly has to negotiate off-road stretches in the asphalt jungle. In general, ABS, ASR, elAsp, YMCA must not be missing when the new four-wheeled family member is presented to the neighbour. The fact that the mid-range car cost just as much as an American single-family house becomes a triviality. After all, American houses do not correspond to the German state of the art either. So we are left with only a pitying look when the news broadcasts American houses blown away. A German house could easily withstand a tornado if there were tornadoes in Germany. The building is technically perfect, and there is a three-hundred-year guarantee on the structure. That is, after all, in line with the average loan repayment period.

Let us observe for a moment the construction of such a German house. If an inexperienced craftsman tries to shorten a protruding wooden lath with a hand saw, he will earn the disfavour of the entire building industry for this faux pas. Some colleague will ask for a stop to fetch his Black & Decker Futura 2004. He gets on his bike and sets off. Thanks to the twenty-one-speed derailleur, the distance can be covered in two hours. It's worth it, because the Black & Decker can screw, hammer, drill, cut, tack, weld, fetch beer and, of course, saw. Besides, the bike has to be moved anyway. After all, it cost as much as an American middle-class car. For that, the Chevy is technically clearly inferior and also doesn't have twenty-one gears. Admittedly, the everyday driver only uses gears fourteen to twenty-one. However, should he ever get lost on the way to work and be embarrassed to have to cross the Brenner, gradients of up to sixty per cent can be mastered in style in gears seven to fourteen. Of course, such a scenario is only imaginable if the bicycle navigation system fails.

You are mistaken, by the way, if you assume that our brave cyclist is soaked with sweat after his odyssey. Fast-drying functional underwear made of high-tech fibres like Cool-dry or Tactel know how to prevent this. He may smell like a puma, but only like a dry puma. High-level technology is indispensable.

This also applies to computers. No regular shark with a shred of self-respect is still bragging about last night's alleged four wives. No, he enters his usual establishment with a superior "I now have two gigahertz!" Thus, decency has also become just a matter of technique.

The German usually has a tower of high-tech gadgets somewhere. It is obligatory, however, that a remote control capable of learning can switch off all appliances at the touch of a button. So if they are listening to a CD while watching a DVD on TV under the sprinkling of the radio receiver, all they have to do is press the red button and they have their well-deserved rest. However, they have already exposed themselves as anachronistic, because the MP 3 format is technically more interesting than the CD player.

The astute reader will now object that our neighbours are no different. The Swiss, for example, generally wear a prime example of precision technology on their wrist. The Swiss watch. In fact, the Swiss watch movement is virtually synonymous with precision. However, each movement is handmade in hours of craftsmanship and can ultimately just show the correct time, as long as it is set and wound. Something like this can hardly be sold in Germany. We want a futuristic-looking chronograph that has been given life somewhere within seconds with the help of a Japanese digital movement. After weeks of study, the lucky watch owner can read the phases of the moon, find out his whereabouts via GPRS, call up the time in forty neighbouring countries, find out the depth when diving, be woken up and even read the time in an emergency. The clock sets itself automatically via radio transmission and is powered by a solar cell, so that a deviation of more than one second is not to be expected in the next two million years. This means that there is a display for all situations typical of everyday life. No, the Swiss really don't know what true technology is... ;-))