My Car, My Companion

I only recently discovered that cojones can be an automotive accessory. Apparently, they’ve been around for a while. Yes. Really. Go ahead, google it. And no, this isn’t that sort of outdated accessory like anti-static straps or nodding dogs. They’re simply less common in Europe because they come from a different cultural sphere. Ursula, the AI I employ, explains the phenomenon as follows: “Testicles made of rubber or plastic that are attached to the bumper or sometimes to the tailpipe of a vehicle. They wobble when the car moves.”

Sounds like fun, right? The practice originated in the U.S, where they’re known as “truck nuts” and are especially popular among pickup, van and SUV drivers. They’re often meant as an “ironic provocation”, Ursula explains, as a nod to audacity, boldness and rebellion. The rubber scrotum sacks are part of “boyish car culture, much like spoilers, stickers or other humorous accessories”. Ursula sometimes expresses herself a bit quaintly. Like an aunt from the fifties. “Boyish car culture?” I ask. “Is that like ‘laddism’ from the nineties?”

“With ‘boyish car culture’ I mean a sort of cheeky, playful form of masculinity or youth culture that often manifests in hobbies, cars, jokes or accessories,” Aunt Ursula replies. “It’s not an official term, more a paraphrase of something like English lad culture. Or American bro culture. In that context, the truck nut phenomenon fits perfectly: a small, ironic, overconfident male gesture that expresses both humor and a sense of coolness. If you like, I can list a few other car accessories from this boyish culture that serve a similar purpose. Would you like me to do that?”

No, thank you. I’d rather point out something else – namely that attaching plastic testicles to an automobile is a symbolic act of Promethean emancipation. Meaning: the car’s mechanical nature is denied. Because a machine has no balls. I use the term Promethean emancipation here as a counterpoint to the concept introduced by philosopher Günther Anders, who half a century ago, in The Obsolescence of Man, coined the term Promethean shame. By that he meant a new kind of shame in the age of technology: our sense of inferiority toward the highly developed machines we ourselves created – machines that are far more precise, powerful and flawless than we could ever be. Humans are anything but flawless or rational; our actions and perceptions are wrapped up in embodiment and emotion. That’s why we tend to emotionalize things. Or humanize them. Like the way I gave my AI a name: Ursula. The wonderful thing is that this anthropomorphization of machines can counteract Promethean shame. A car is then just another human being.

Metal with a soul

So what is the essence of the machine? The machine – say, in the form of a car – is an expression of the human will to control, to order, to achieve efficiency. It is a mirror of reason. At the same time, machines shape our perception of the world: they define how we understand time, work, body and nature. Some machines are closer to us than others. Cars move. Cars have a face. Cars touch on the big themes in our lives: freedom, status, the love of noise.

That includes moral authority, by the way. Traffic rules, speed limits or seatbelt alarms all demonstrate how the late-modern automobile teaches us what counts as proper behavior. As early as 1992, French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour pointed out that technologies increasingly take on moral functions once reserved for humans. The car intervenes. It meddles. And increasingly so. My 1980 Mercedes SL doesn’t care whether I wear a seatbelt, but my much younger Range Rover goes berserk if I don’t buckle up. The Range Rover – we call it Toni – recently lost it for no reason at all. In a parking lot in northern Germany. Who wouldn’t? Suddenly the alarm went off. Of course I had pressed the wrong button. I’m only human, after all. Promethean shame. Still, briefly, I was angry with my car.

But it was just a temporary dissociation. Every machine will disappoint you sooner or later – that’s part of their elusiveness. Otherwise they’re one with us. Otherwise I love Toni. Toni is like a home away from home. Latour aptly described how subject and object merge when driving: driver and vehicle form a “quasi-object”, a hybrid actor between human and machine. We don’t drive cars; we and (…)

→ Read the full story in ramp #69 “More Than Machines”.