I was riding in the passenger seat of a 2010 Lexus convertible looking out the window at the pre dawn of Atlanta Georgia a couple weeks ago when I saw the future. Dana was falling back to sleep in the back, and Bryan was driving up the I-85 south toward Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Bryan and I hadn’t slept at all, and Dana wasn’t in much better condition, even though she had a bit of sleep. We’d been dancing in the rain and having an amazing time and were all very quiet now as dawn approached.

At first it didn’t seem special — at least not much more special than the amazing feeling of riding in the passenger seat of a 2010 Lexus convertible — and Bryan selected our destination in the onboard computer. The computer, like all the other navigation computers of modern cars, has a map, and a series of buttons, and when you push them a voice comes on over the stereo system speakers and tells you where to turn. The map changes as you drive, and if you’re available to watch, you can see where you’re going on the little screen. It’s neato the first couple times you do it, sometimes the experience of programming a destination is so daunting that one is immediately overwhelmed and bored at the same time. These navigation computers are a racket anyway, right? You pay for the service, or have to pay for upgrades every year so that the little maps can show you where the nearest Starbucks is. Handy, maybe, but it’s a racket. Why on earth wouldn’t you want to just look out the window? It seems like the real art of a road trip is lost when you’re hunched forward, looking into a little screen, and rather than listening to your guts about which exit might have a restroom, or a starbucks. What is lost is those priceless experiences where you make an error, and with fumes alone, and a growling tummy, you pull into the parking lot of a Flying-J truck stop and end up spending hours wandering around in the gun isle, wondering who in the world buys a gun accessory at 4 am along some strange highway in the darkest parts of the United States. If you’re really delirious you never have to wait long to find out.

One night, some twenty years ago I was driving across country with Jonathan and Paul. We were headed to Cleveland together for a conference. Paul didn’t tell us that he couldn’t legally drive until we were well past Sparks — much too late to turn back and deposit him on his stoop and resume our trip with a better qualified driver — and I had the driving thing down, but had never driven a stick shift before. Jonathan was disconcerted, but undaunted, and I managed my first clutch lessons on Highway 80 east quite well. We split the driving, and Paul slept the trip away in the way back of the VW. Somewhere around Clark, Kansas the following night it was time to get some gas. I pulled into a beacon of a truck stop. They had four pumps, and a little food mart, and it had just begun to rain. As we stretched our legs, I heard what sounded like a crying baby off in the dark. “Waaahhh!” Confused, I wandered over to the roadside and spotted a baby pig standing in the light rain crying. If you’ve never been to a petting zoo, then you’ve missed out on how completely adorable a baby pig is. They are the sweetest things. Nearby there was a lone candy machine — almost empty — which had some kind of mealy looking pellets inside. I fished out a quarter and filled the palm of my right hand with them. I walked back to the fence where the piglet was and made kissing sounds into the rain and held out my hand through the fence. The baby pig cried at me, “Waaahhh!” My heart broke.

“Come here sweetie.” I said softly.

“Waaahhh!” said the pig.

I reached my arm deeper through the hole in the fence, sticking it through as far as it would go. Some of the pellets fell out of the pile and sprinkled onto the dark mud below my wavering arm.

Suddenly I heard a deep snort. And something lunged up and out of the mud toward my hand. I felt a sharp gnashing along my fingers and a huge, rough, wetness cover my entire hand. The force was incredible and it pulled my arm all the way into the fence, and I lost my balance and fell to the ground shrieking like a little kid.

When I got my arm back It was muddy and covered in what looked like saliva. I was scraped, but not pierced. My heart was racing. I was breathless. I looked into the darkness and saw a huge pig, the mother I assumed, standing less than an inch from my face. I climbed to my feet and stared at it with bitterness. The baby pig cried and the mother pig, her face covered in the pellets I’d meant to comfort the crying little piglet, just stared me down in the darkness.

I ran back to the gas station and washed my hands, counting my fingers and toes to be sure everything was there still. I was fine. The pig had just scared the crap out of me. I felt more tricked and surprised by this duo’s flesh seeking racket than anything else. But a cup of horrific coffee and a couple of cigarettes later I was laughing, and everything was just fine. We were back on the road, and my farm adventure in Clark was behind me. The trip to Cleveland was fun, and a couple of life lessons were ahead of me as the result, but without the use of gut instinct, and old maps, we might never have pulled into that gas station, nor would I have ever made the acquaintance of a pair of pigs using youth and cliché to lure human flesh into their diet.

Back on the I-85 South, Bryan and I were roaring down the highway, admittedly hunched forward and peering into the navigation computer’s little screen. What’s different about the 2010 Lexus version is the link with XM radio they have. It is a satellite link between the car and the cartographic computer somewhere in space. The computer showed us the road ahead of us in real time, and a split screen view showed traffic conditions and offered us options to either choose the best route, or to simply trust the voice in the speakers to choose the best route for us.

Admittedly we were really not looking at the road. We were staring into the screen. A couple of times I had to hold onto my seat as we rapidly approached vehicles which were clearly not looking into the same computer we were. After a couple of these scares, we laughed because we both knew we weren’t paying any attention to the road. Laughter in the face of technological obsession and a very near brush with death is the only natural response I think. Don’t you?

“It’s only a matter of time before these computers can show us in real time the other cars on the road.” Said Bryan.

“How?” I asked.

Turns out, that since it’s a real time satellite relationship between the vehicle and the navigation system, it is not much of a leap at all to assume that soon we’ll be driving down the road on auto pilot. In fact, because the service is a subscription service, we may even be able to create a social network from it. So we can friend people, and know that the car three lanes over, fifteen cars ahead of us is our neighbor, or co worker, or maybe even our boss. We can choose car icons, and send instant messages to one another while we roar down the highway in the wee hours of the morning. This will make stalking and road rage so much more fun. It will also cause terrible accidents. But it’s coming. It is the future.

The thought occurred to me that when this comes, and it’s coming, the next thing will be regulated speeds, and downloadable applications for the computer in the car. We will be otherwise completely preoccupied as we travel. In essence, the art of driving will become a form of public transportation. So when you buy a new Lexus, you will be investing in your personal compartment on a vast network of public transportation administered, overseen, and controlled completely automatically via satellite.

It’s a beautifully horrible thought isn’t it? I’ve seen the future. It’s coming…