Once you enter, you are the Car
Martin Heidegger and Marshall Mcluhan already described people’s tendency to extend their identities in the animate objects when interacting with them. When for instance, driving a car the vehicle seems to become an extension of our body. It absorbs our sense of identity and when two cars hits another in traffic, the driver of the vehicle being struck is more likely to say: “Hey! You hit me!”, than “You hit my car” or “Your car hit my car”, to be accurate.
I wonder what these thinkers would have made of the Hitachi’s vein authentication system, which identifies individuals based on the unique pattern of blood vessels inside their fingers. While providing an extra layer of security against car theft, Hitachi’s steering wheel finger vein authentication system also works to improve in-vehicle comfort when used with seats, mirrors and air conditioners that auto-adjust according to the preferences of the driver touching the wheel. Just another small step in the thinning of the border between people and products? Once you enter, you are the car.
Source: Hitachi Press release (japanese), Via Pink Tentacle.
I think you are exaggerating (or lacking further explanation) when you say that we lose “our sense of identity” while driving a car simply because of the way we express ourselves, that meaning, somehow in our sub-consciousness the sense of I and It is lost into some sort of amalgamated identity, that becomes the I.
I think, to put it simple, we identify ourselves through something we are in control of, whose actions are dependent on our will, as an online avatar, our car, and in fact, our own body.
Oh sorry, the example wasn’t yours, but Martin Heidegger and Marshall Mcluhan’s. Eh!
Inlogic, please mind that I didn’t write we ‘lose’ our sense of identity, but that it ‘absorbs’ our sense of identity. Anyhow, I completely agree with your statement that “we identify ourselves through something we are in control of, whose actions are dependent on our will, as an online avatar, our car, and in fact, our own body.” Fascinating things can just work like that.