Kieran Healy

Teeny Tech meets Tiny Norm

Scene: In a parking lot, a few hours after renting a car for the week (much nicer than my regular car).

Teeny Tech: The car’s headlights turn off by themselves about 30 seconds after you move away from the car.

Tiny Norm: If you see someone’s left their lights on, you tell them.

Teeny Tech meets Tiny Norm:

Helpful Person: “Hey, you left your lights on!”

Me: “No, they go off by themselves.”

HP [looks slightly embarrassed]: “Oh. Sorry.”

Inside the mind of HP: “Well that’s the last time I ever do that.”

My lights go off as well. In the past I have done both that, and simply said thanks, feeling guilty for lying and in a way playing the HP as a rube.
The pain of transitions.

Well, at least you figured out that the lights turned off by themselves. I, on the otherhand, spent a good 15 minutes trying to figure out where the damn off switch was. My helpful person saw my distress, mentioned that they drive the same model, and told me about the lights.

MWD

Same for me, first time I encountered this (on a company fleet vehicle). I spent ten minutes going through the manual, and didn’t see anything about automatic lights. I figured that I’d have to take the vehicle back, dropped off my groceries at my house, came back out to the vehicle, only to find out that the lights were now off.

Mutual Aid

The socialogist Kieran Healy writes on her blog about how a rental car entrapped her into embaressing a stranger. Back in 1984 one of the things I noticed about the Mac/PC dialectic was that the PC community was entangled in a network of mutual aid. Th…