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July, 2002
guest essay by Donald R. Walker
If you are one of those who wonder why most of the world hates us, wonder no more! A few weeks ago there was a bit on the local radio news. Somewhere up in Butler County, Procter and Gamble maintains a consumer laboratory and one of the nifty doo-dads they're working on is the "smart washer."
If you've ever had your underwear turned pink because someone (possibly you?) accidentally mixed in a new red sweatshirt with the whites, then the idea will have some appeal. A washing machine will be equipped with sensors that feed information back to a microprocessor. The washer will know if you have mixed a red sock in with your t-shirts and jockey shorts. It will know if you've included a dry-clean only item in your wash. It will even know if something has been washed before or if the temperature setting you've selected is appropriate for the items being washed. Dry cleaners will be able to tie each piece brought in to the exact customers. Sounds great, doesn't it?
A perky PR flack extolled the virtues of the concept during the segment. She cheerfully explained how the "smart washer" would enable anyone in the family to do the wash. Do something wrong and it speaks up and warns you. But how?
A tiny radio transmitter is tagged to each piece of laundry. This signal is heard by the washer and the warning is generated. Whoa there, Tex.
A tiny radio transmitter!
The fly in the ointment currently is size and cost. Right now the transmitter is not tiny enough nor cheap enough. The spokesperson acknowledged this but then reassured the listeners that "when the transmitters reach about a penny each" then clothing manufacturers will be able to put then on every piece of clothing sold. From the moment you walk out of the store with it until it finally disintegrates on the back of some homeless person, a garment will be able to be tracked. If the tracking technology is cheap enough to be installed in a dry cleaning shop or a washing machine, it will be cheap enough to install in restaurants, airports, automobiles, damn near anywhere. You'll be able to pick up one at Radio Shack.
Hey, is Junior really going to the senior prom? Just program your car sensor to recognize all his clothes and the next morning get a readout. Oops, he and his lowlife buddies went to Lulu's Cathouse and Bar and Grille instead. Of course, the blackmail factor will come in when he confronts you with his own readout showing that you stopped off at the ole Knotty Pine for a few quick ones on your way back from getting the lawnmower fixed.
In some respects, I wonder why I'm even writing this essay. If, like me, you think this is a bad idea you can probably rattle off half a dozen ways in which the smart washer and its tags could be abused and I'm preaching to the choir. If you're reading along and thinking "Wow, what a great idea-tell me more" then no objection I raise will ring true for you.
The issue, to my mind at least, is one of simply doing something because it seems neat without taking even a moment to think about it: what are the consequences, is this just a piece of nifty "whiz-bang" or somewhere, embedded in the concept, is there something that might hope to be of real benefit to humanity. Could the money spent so far on the smart washer have been better spent? Of course there are the obvious possibilities; donating the money to cancer research, a world hunger project, on research to make all of P&G's laundry products more environmentally friendly. But if they'd taken the money out and burned it in a pile on Fountain Square it would have probably been better spent. To resurrect a caution from the days of World War II, "is this trip really necessary?"
The problem revealed by the smart washer idea is that we tend to do things because we can, not because they're good ideas. By sheer weight of statistics, we believe that if we do enough things, some of them are bound to be good . We do things believing that the marketplace will determine whether or not an idea was a good one. We tend to be hated because we lumber about heedlessly, with the arrogance of affluence. And worse, when we decide to get on a moral high horse about something like preserving the rain forests, we simply tell countries like Belize to stop logging, doing nothing to replace the lost industry or worse, wink when black markets spring up.
Now I'm no Luddite. You can have my microwave when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. And I don't think that the worth of every idea should be weighed against all the social ills the world inflicts on itself. But now and then would be a good idea! To this end, I have a modest proposal. Not so far-reaching or entertaining as Dean Swift's, I'm afraid, but with merit to be sure.
For every dollar corporations spend on legal fees and marketing, they should be required to spend an equal amount on philosophers-it doesn't matter if they hire in-house staffs of philosophers or contract out to philosophical consulting firms, just so long as there is dollar-for-dollar parity. And furthermore, the philosophers should enjoy the same kind of tacit veto power as legal departments have. I think it would be great to hear a really stupid idea (aerosol chocolate syrup comes to mind) shot down in a board room when some junior exec says, "Legal thinks its okay but Philosophy says we're gonna get creamed on this one."
Or as Mad Magazine once said, "thimk!"
Donald R. Walker
June-July, 2002
