Musk’s latest Tesla spectacle reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write about for years: fashion shows.
Many people don’t get them. “Who’s going to wear that?!?!” That misses the point. A fashion show is demonstrating the heights and limits of their new design: colors, patterns, fabrics, cuts, fit, etc. If we can do ALL THIS, imagine what our designs can make possible for the clothes you can realistically wear.
Not that most of us can imagine — we’re not fashion designers, and are not creative in that way. But it garners confidence in the audience: They’re going to bring some radical innovations to real clothes — I can’t wait to see them.
It is also meant as a spectacle. A joy to watch, not a meeting with the board of directors about their 5 year business plan. (And it’s art! The most ancient art: decorating the human body, transforming it, because one perceives clothes not as occlusions, but as the body itself. But that’s a whole other story!)
Same for Musk / Tesla’s demo. Almost word for word as in fashion. “Who is actually going to want their car to do that?!?!” As before, that misses the point. Tesla is demonstrating the heights and limits of their new design innovations: the suction and propulsive capabilities. The point isn’t that your car is going to do that. The point is: We have whole new revolutionary toolboxes at our disposal, so imagine what we can do for your everyday car.
Again, most of us know little about car engineering, and our creativity doesn’t take us very far at predicting what a real car is going to be able to do. But it breeds confidence: “They’re going to bring some radical innovations to real cars. I can’t wait to see them!”
When I asked ChatGPT — because I’m not a car engineer or designer — “What possible applications could that kind of technology have, even if they look nothing like the feats at the Tesla demo?”, it gave a variety of suggestive guesses. Floor suction could mean radically better cornering, braking, acceleration, wet-road grip, and stability — even at low speeds. Propulsive thrust could mean assisted acceleration and braking, skid and spin correction, control when the wheels lose contact, and emergency maneuvers beyond what tire grip alone allows. Who knows which of these, if any, will matter. That’s the point: these are new engineering powers, and most of us aren’t the people who know what to do with them.
These spectacles aren’t product demos. They’re FLEXES. They’re saying: “Look at the new powers we have at our disposal.” What eventually gets built with those powers may look nothing like the flex that showed us they were possible.