The need for speed — and driving under the influence — of the cockpit
If I am next to you and you are driving — telling you that I am about to pull the hand brake — and I invite us to take a different turn, asking us to reflect about our need for speed, how would you feel? And furthermore, I shift the radio from *Eye of the Tiger*, by Survivor, to a lecture essentially telling us that how we conduct ourselves through life — and how we drive our startups and our companies — are driving us into a land of confusion. How would you feel? Probably, a shift that doesn’t fit. We both feel a not-so-smooth move, not coherent, perhaps brutal. It may even not matter the arguments since we may not get to that point anyway.
Now imagine that we shift places. Yes, I start still or stuck but I accept to take the steering wheel, and we go. Now you tell me to watch out, to take care, and that I get 1000 points for not hitting the granny. You tell me too some stratetic moves, like to save fuel, and you ask us for a quick stop to replace our tires, that sort of language. Of course, this feels coherent, to some extent, by the implied situation of the position that we are, in the cockpit. Actually, right now, I ask us for that high beat music although I rather go with “Believe,” by Cher.
Now, when we reflect about the road of founders, as entrepreneurs, or us as entrepreneurs of our lives, we all know that they are on a path of learning. We see the coherence from there. So we know that for them to do things well requires self-growth. But we know too that they do so by being, in the first place, before becoming. This is not different from the situation of artists that get things done and, while doing, are being called to learn.
Now, a complication that way goes back to that cockpit, especially now that the cockpit appears to be richer, or smarter, or better. It may be that the cockpit, and its dashboard, drive us to the need for speed. It may be that we are teased to use the things we see in front of us. What we see, to some extent, seems clear, well designed, and applicable. This is the cockpit. We see controls, and instruments, and meters, and counters, and lights. We see the dashboard. And we feel the empowering seats too, to some extent, and how it feels safe, and comfortable. And of course, to be fair, we do see the road ahead.
When I wrote this, I remembed of an old Atari game, a racing game called Enduro. It was basically a car, and I could accelerate or hit the break and move, to the right or to the left. The goal, as far as I remember, was to pass other cars ahead, to not hit their back while running fast. A nice thing was how the weather changed out of the sudden, from sunny to rainy to snowy and into the evening and the night. For each of these conditions, it required a specific skill. The one I liked in particular was the foggy, because the cars would appear out of the gray, from nowhere. It was fun and challenging to play.
Anyone can understand and enjoy these things that can be understood and enjoyed. In today’s words, I would say that anyone can be onboarded into an experience. That game had some elements of that, and it was simple and fun. If it were today, I would say that it had a good gamified experience. But those were the days when our world didn’t know the word gamification.
This essay was produced on the way of the the writing work of Slow Down to Startup. Get in touch to help me launch this book.
