April 5, 2016
I would like to start this article off with an apology, the title is clickbait at its finest… but you would be lying if you said that Toyotosoft is not one of the great portmanteaus (it is actually a second level portmanteau) of the language (or languages to be more precise). With that out of the way, there is some truth to the statement. Toyota and Microsoft, in their continuing collaborative effort to internet-ify (that is not word... yet) the outdated technological workings of a car, are creating (mostly Toyota) a company that with that as their sole goal. Most of the information surrounding this is not new. In fact, this effort started many moons ago. It is a direct consequence of the Microsoft and Toyota agreeing to assist one another back in 2011. In case one is not aware (because I have not yet informed you), Toyota Connected is a subsidiary of the best selling automaker in the entirety of this solar system. Its purpose is to; as mentioned before; research and implement technological advances that alleviate the; often stressful; burden of transportation. This article, is not about detailing the ways that Toyota Connected plans to accomplish the aforementioned feat, that is elsewhere. Instead, onto a Puck-like breaking of the fourth wall (it’s like I am Shakespeare with a squirrel-esque attention span... sans: fame… discipline... or talent). Digression, within an aside, aside; Zack Hicks (the Chief Information Officer of Toyota Connected) said that they mean to liberate “customers from the Tyranny of Technology.” That may sound profound, but it is drivel. Hicks intentionally used the anti-quip, because it he knew that it was sonically appealing in its use of alliteration, so it would inevitably be used in a quote (case in point). However, it is an amphibology entirely devoid of pith. In what way is technology even vaguely tyrannical? Technology is only despotic in the same way water or oxygen are. Sure, they are omnipotent, omnipresent (and essentially omniscient in the internet’s case) and we have to live in a manner that accommodates them, but the alternative is societal stagnation and/or eradication (some millennials could figuratively die if disconnected from their internet intermediary). Also, the group vice president of Toyota North America (Hicks) is insinuating the company he helms, is looking to the ninth most innovative company of 2016 (Microsoft would likely yield technology in a word association), to battle technological brutality. That is like Victor Frankenstein-ing (reanimating an amalgamation of dead people) Hitler and Genghis Kahn (Gengolf Kahntler) to stop Kim Jong Un, it might get the job done, but the result fuhrer east of the target. Honestly, Toyota Connected has vaguely promised interesting things. Even if the finished product is less than spectacular, it is still a massive technological improvement on the status quo. However, it is unfortunate that they have to focus on deepities. If the government were to ignore the military industrial complex for a few years, they could innovate our infrastructure with the proceeds. Then companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google could do to the US travel infrastructure what they did to the internet infrastructure.