Honk if you love smart cars — and viruses and hacks and data leaks

When my father passed away, he left a few items: an HP desktop my brother-in-law couldn’t turn on, a fancy watch that will someday befuddle my 6-year-old niece, about seven sets of golf clubs, no buffer zone between me and my mother (just teasing, Mom), and a slightly rusted 1987 Mercedes 560SL. He loved that car, yet left it sitting in the driveway under a tarp for five years. By the time I got there, it had given way to body rust, cracked leather seats, and a sophisticated spider society that attempted formal diplomatic relations before trying to eat me.

Why this walk down automotive memory lane? Because someday I might want to bequeath my last car to whichever mail-order kid I adopt, so he can fondly maintain it after I go the way of the floppy disk. But odds are that won’t happen unless I skip the human connection and take in a Cylon.

[ Dumb apps equal big bucks in Silicon Valley’s new math. ]

Every tech yuppie I know is suddenly caught up in five distractions:

1. Not-so-smart watches and glasses that run pointless crap-apps and get you punched in bars
2. Every iteration of a seemingly endless evolution of multisized rectangles with HD screens to track your jogging (or lack thereof)
3. Mobile apps so stupid in design and origin they make my eyes bleed
4. 3D goggles that look like blacked-out SCUBA masks but are supposed to enhance your perception of real life
5. Connected cars (to bring it back to Dad)

Open source meets open road

Case in point: The Linux Foundation just released Automotive Grade Linux (whatever that means) v1, and Apple and Google recently gave ominous glimpses of what they want your next ride to be. Judging by those specs, the connected car of tomorrow is basically an embedded data center on wheels with apps that hopefully work together to control different vehicle systems. Then throw in big-time Wi-Fi hotspot connectivity so that your buggy can link back to your automaker and let it know who you are, where you’re going, what you’re buying, and what kind of fuel you’re using, as well as hand over God-mode control of your A.I. jalopy in moments of need.

Also, don’t forget recent developments by a whole bunch of car companies that let cars park themselves, brake themselves, cap your speed, edit your PowerPoint, mix cappuccinos, and eventually, talk to other vehicles, which will supposedly make the roads safer and retire the middle finger as the state bird of New Jersey.

It sounds great — except when your car forgets to update on Tuesday or has a CPU-fart or suffers a Carbleed vulnerability, thereby deciding a tumbling Coors Lite can is worth slamming on the brakes at 80 mph. Maybe it thinks that a baby carriage is a great place to park. Perhaps it decrees your life is boring, so it adds some spice by suddenly accelerating into a tollbooth.

That satellite-connected Wi-Fi hotspot sounds wonderful, right? Remember when we used to worry about locking down Wi-Fi routers? Ha! Were we ever stupid. Obviously we should make them mobile and hand over full control to someone who combines the greed of Solomon and the morals of a serial killer. Now, if a tech-talented teen doesn’t like his grades he can wait until his math teacher gets in her car, hack AndroidAuto Eternal Beta 1.714.632b, and remotely steer her into a light pole … or his English teacher (not a new idea if you follow OnStar hacking developments).

I don’t want to get into the high-five fest taking place at the NSA as these technologies speed to market — or what Google, Facebook, Verizon, and all the other big data bastards will do with this new fire hose of personal info we’ll spew their way. Also, any guesses on which is safer: Slugging a double shot of Johnny Walker before sliding behind the wheel, or snapping pics with your Toyota sideview cams and voice-posting them to Instagripe, as you watch a must-see kitten video your girlfriend liked on FriendWorm via your Dell Me2Glass, all while cruising down the interstate at 75 mph and sipping a $10 latte with one hand because you’re sleep-deprived from your late-night tweeting, swiping, and tapping?

In case of emergency

Why not? Should a fender bender beckon, your Windows Car 8.1 OS will hit the brakes with 99.95 percent SLA certainty. If a few hundred consumers get turned into highway jelly early on, we’ll issue a recall, post an appropriately self-effacing but not quite guilt-proving root cause analysis graphs, then sell them version 9.

Unless you’re a frat-boy starter-upper with a low-IQ app idea and the blind, unshakeable optimism that comes from being 25, stunningly ignorant, and in love with yourself, you tend to become more averse to technology as you see our subspecies rush blindly forward with its digital baubles. Or maybe I watched “Battlestar Galactica” and “Terminator” a few too many times and don’t relish the idea of giving control of 80 or 90 percent of my next-gen smart car to a mechanically unstable, spyware-infested, personal-data-sucking SkyNet-to-be.

I’m going to the garage now to conduct a careful once-over on Pop’s grand ol’ Benz. Pretty soon, it may be the only way I can get to around without risking an in-transit IRS audit or Pammy tracking me with Google-branded cornea transplant to see if I went to Stop & Shop as ordered or if I’m loitering at the last RadioShack on earth.

Take care of those classic cars, people. You’ll thank me when the Transformers take over.

This article, “Honk if you love smart cars — and viruses and hacks and data leaks,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com.