With the advent of Personal Portable electronics in the late 80's and early 90's, came also an explosion in the need for data to travel and move to where we are.  Cellular phone solved the verbal data issue and notebooks solved the work data issue.  Private Networks and later the internet made it even easier to access our data from anywhere except in the car.

 

The Car remained an island all on its own without meaningful integration with the rest of the world and it remained alone with its hardwired contents isolated from the rest of the world.  tapes and CD's allowed for the transfer of soft environment such as songs and books on tapes, but that was it.

 

We saw matters differently, particularly in light of the heavy travel experience.  In addition to already experimenting with in car computing for navigation and later driver assistance in 1985, we have now added Cellular Phones to the mix and we put together the concept of car specific applications and data just like we have home specific applications (video games) and office specific applications (Excel, Word processing etc.).

 

The Applications should be car specific and aims to add value to the driving experience.  This means taking our favorites with us from car to car.  The simplest and the best way to do that was to add the data of any types to a memory media and loading it to the next vehicle computer.  51/4 floppies were flimsy, the 3.5" held more data but they were still an added carryon piece of technology.  The Cellphone was the obvious answer especially as it began to get smaller in size.

 

Our IP call for storing personal data, preferences and applications on the phone itself.  Oversized data can be accessed via the phone line from the main frame and off we go.   The same will also serve to identify the driver to the vehicle within the context of MAN, MACHINE, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORY and REGULATION.

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