7/29/05; by Ruth Zaslow

Field Interviews

A ’98 Acura Integra. I bought it about a month and a half ago.

First, it was affordable. Actually, I wanted a pick-up truck at first. They’re cheap and you can throw stuff in the back. But I found I didn’t like driving them. I didn’t like being up so high. I started looking for something smaller, and happened to find a good deal on this car from a Cisco engineer, a fellow European who was going home.

Online. I must have looked at hundreds of web pages at first, then I did a more restricted search, based on what’d I’d learned. Price range, mileage, cost, proximity--those kinds of factors. Eventually I narrowed it down to five cars that I actually wanted to look at. It was a hassle to test drive because I didn’t have a car to get around.

A 2001 Ford Ranger and a ’98 Honda Accord. The Accord was being sold by a fellow who lived right here in Escondido Village, so I was really tempted because it was so close. But that car sold in something like 12 hours.

It does. I mean, I have to have a feeling of comfort about the person, a base level of comfort to give the person so much money. I was looking to minimize my discomfort. That was just a part f my search criteria, though. I was also looking for the best deal, on a reliable car with the least displacement.

Consumer Reports online. I looked at reports for all five cars. I was looking for potential trouble areas, like in some Accords, you have to do some major parts replacements.

I also got Carfax to check out the history of the car I wound up buying. I didn’t even consider going to a dealership. Just too expensive.

I’d say three kinds. Driving to the grocery store. I’ve only lived in big cities before where I could walk or take public transport to whatever I needed. But here, I can’t even walk to the grocery store. It’s affected my quality of life. I work long hours and I can’t plan that far ahead about groceries. So I’d get home at 11:00 at night and be hungry, with no way to get to a grocery store that was open.

My girlfriend lives in San Francisco. I’ve been commuting by Caltrain and bicycle. It’s OK for Palo Alto in the morning, but it’s hard to get up to San Francisco late at night. The last train is at 10:00 p.m., and I’m not done in the lab by then. And on the weekends, there’s no express train.

Weekend driving, weekends away. Maybe to Santa Cruz or to the beach. Before, we always used to go in my girlfriend’s car, but she’s never felt comfortable driving through the mountains.

Sometimes I listen to music. The car came with a CD player, and I have a couple of CD’s in the car. I also keep a sketchbook for ideas. Of course, I don’t use the sketchbook when I’m driving, but sometimes when I get where I’m going or before I get out to go home.

No. They’re about my research projects. I don’t really think too much about the car.

Sure. I listen to music or NPR. With the CD player, well, I stopped buying CD’s years ago. I was a DJ, so I had vinyl records or files. A lot of the files are from the musicians themselves.

Yeah. My music collection lives on my hard drive.

I have a number of computers. A desktop at the office, a desktop at home. A laptop at the office, a laptop at home. And a fifth laptop dedicated for building apps. The music itself is spread out. At home, I have a hard drive dedicated to music. I can access it from the office, but I typically don’t. The office has its own music, I like a more limited set of choices there. Otherwise I put too much time into thinking about music and less time on my work.

About one-third are from the musicians themselves. I also have some that are my own music, either that I’ve recorded or produced myself. I also do a lot of downloading from emusic.com. They only work with independent labels and they’re very affordable. I’ve had a subscription with them for four or five years. One thing I like is that once you pay for a download, you can re-download it for free. So I can download it to any of my computers if I want to do it that way.

For the car, I’ve burned a CD or two from the computer, but that’s all. I just don’t care enough.

Yeah, I just don’t care enough about music in the car to take the time to burn CD’s. Right before I get in the car, I’m coming out of a room with internet access. But somehow getting the music accessible to me there into the car doesn’t matter to me.

I like listening to CD’s from 10 years ago. I have several large flipbooks with the CD’s. I rotate one or two out of the flipbook and into the car.

I don’t know. It’s music I really liked when I was younger. I can still relate to it, but, I also experience it differently.

I put the CD in when I start out. I let it play ‘til it repeats. I usually catch it on the second song that repeats.

Well, the drive up to San Francisco is exactly one CD long. So usually, I’m getting out of the car. But if I’m stuck in traffic or it takes longer, I usually switch to the radio. I don’t like fumble around changing CD’s. In the car, I’m not good at multi-tasking. It takes my attention from the road.

Only if I plan them ahead, like I’ll call when I get onto the freeway. I don’t pick up the phone unless I’m still arranging details with the person I’m meeting. Like the other evening, I was getting together with my girlfriend up in San Francisco for an art gallery opening. But we hadn’t decided what time we were going to meet. So I called her from the car, left a message, and she called me back. I took that call.

Yeah, I print out directions from Mapquest and my girlfriend—usually that’s who I’m with—will have them during the drive and tell me what I have to do. Then the maps go to die in the back of the car. Or maybe the side pocket of the door.

I’m with my girlfriend and we‘re starting either in Palo Alto or San Francisco. We have breakfast, load up the car. If we’re in San Francisco, usually we get stuck in traffic in SOMA.

There’s music playing in the background. Usually CD’s from the flipbook or that I’ve burned. There’s conversation. We might listen to a really good song or two, turn the sound up for that. We also listen to the radio. I’ve been a big fan of “Car Talk” on NPR for a long time, even though I didn’t have a car. We listen to the other talk shows on NPR. If we’re in my girlfriend’s car, she has the MP3 player, so we use MP3’s.

When I drive, she picks the music, and when she drives, I pick the music.

Yeah, I have one too.

You know, just recently I have been thinking about that. But my MP3 is pretty old, so I’d probably have to replace it. Plus, I’d either have to buy a new radio, or solder an audio cable onto the old radio. I don’t spend that much time in the car. I just don’t care enough.

Yeah. I had to buy a car. As I said, it was a quality of life issue. But it felt like a defeat.

I wanted to go through life with out a car. But that won’t work in California. So to raise my quality of life I got one. But I try not to use it too much. Here’s something that happened just the other day. I was supposed to meet some friends at Café Barrone and I thought: “OK, I’ll ride my bike back to the house, get the car and drive to meet them.” Then I thought: “What are you thinking! Just bike over to Café Barrone! It’s faster!”

I grew up in Germany, lived in Munich ‘til I was 18. I went to college in Philadelphia, and I lived there quite happily without a car. Then I lived in Amsterdam, where a parking spot costs about 1,500 Euro’s a month. There are twice as many bikes as cars. Then spent a summer in Rome. Used public transportation there. Oh, I also lived in Paris, it’s not so good there for bikes. I used public transportation. Then I moved to California.

One year. Within the first two weeks, I bought a bike. I tried to see how long I could go with out a car. But it wasn’t working out. I decided I’d buy one this summer; it was a good time because classes were over, and I wanted to see more of California. I bought the car after a week of looking.

My dad worked work Mercedes Benz. He got an employee discount. So we always had a C or E class. My dad switched jobs later and he still has the last Mercedes he bought. It’s about 15 years old now.

When I was young, my parents bought a VW Metro bus. It had been a postal van. They turned it into a camper and painted it rainbow colors. My parents had a real do-it-yourself streak.

We’d go camping in summer. Usually two weeks every summer in the van. My parents had a number of camping places they liked to go.

Books, toys, talking. We didn’t do much listening to music or anything like that.

I was a musician and I ran a record label. So to me, music doesn’t feel like entertainment. It’s personal.

Yeah. Something I’ve had a part in making.

These days, sometimes DVD’s if I’m at my girlfriends. There’s a good independent video store near where she lives. I used to go to clubs and shows. These days, I spend a lot of time online. I get my news that way, my random op-ed pieces. I’m not really interested in mass entertainment.

I’m not good enough at understanding yet what role cars play for people here. In Europe, cars take a backseat. Some of my friends there can’t afford cars. And the ones who do well usually take trains or fly. While I was living there, owning a car didn’t cross my mind. But here people spend hours in their cars.

I’m skeptical of business models that target cars. Eventually, we’ll be able to access everything, everywhere, endlessly. It’s just a matter of what the interface is. In the past, interesting technologies came from the desktop. Contrast that with more recent days with mobile technologies, like cell phones. With mobile technologies, businesses are just trying to milk subscribers. It’s basically an oligopoly of a couple of providers that stifles new services.

As far as cars, any new car technology will have to piggyback on GSM. From there, there might be many business attached that might provide solutions for customers. One thing that’s important to remember is that a lot of computer science firms focus on inner-city technologies. That way, they don’t have to negotiate with provides about access. In more rural areas, access is a large issue. The only other model is a broadcast model, like radio, where the consumer doesn’t have a choice. In the end, I think people will have music in the car, but will manage that music outside the car. I mean that’s the way it would have to be, unless you had a 20 inch PC in your car.

Of course, my own bias is to have no conspicuous technology at all in the cars. I think about parking my car overnight in my girlfriend’s neighborhood. If I had that 20 inch PC, I’d have to worry about theft! I don’t want to have to worry about that kind of thing at all.

Interview 27 (zaslow)