It’s the favorite device of technology journalists: the car analogy. Computers are too goshdarn hard and complicated, so when writers need to explain a concept to their dullard readers, they use cars, knowing that even Joe Lunchpail can understand the basic workings of a simple automobile.

The car analogy would be the perfect literary crutch, except for the fact that computers are not that much like cars. So car anologies are not only condescending, they are usually wrong-headed as well.

As a public service, Geek Out New York will compile car analogies in technology journalism on the following schedule: whenever I see them.

The inaugural Car Analogy Watch comes courtesy of an otherwise decent piece “The Death of Planned Obsolescence” by Slate’s Farhad Manjoo.

[B]ecause music players, cell phones, cameras, GPS navigators, video game consoles, and nearly everything else now runs on Internet-updatable software, our gadgets’ functions are no longer static. […]

To appreciate how amazing this is, imagine if the same rules held sway in the car industry. Five years after you bought it, you could take your beater to the shop, and after a quick patch it’d be blessed with electronic stability control, a more fuel-efficient engine, and a radio that received satellite broadcasts.

Gadgets receive free feature upgrades: I don’t get it.

Cars receive free feature upgrades: I get it!