Offside Undo.(computers in cars)(Brief Article)

``Touch that dial and lose fingers at your elbow!''

Okay, probably not something social services cares to hear directed at my kid, but how else is he to learn the visceral pleasure of an engine's snarl?

Perhaps it's because my boys have grown up in MTV's it's-all-about-me world of self-indulgence, but the moment they climb into a car they reach for the stereo controls. Linkin Park's promoters have obviously done a better job than have America's driving instructors, which comes as no surprise.

That stuff-the detritus that surrounds a car and has not one iota to do with propelling it-distracts from the joy of driving, a joy all but lost within civilized society. Accoutrements from cell phones and CDs, mp3s, navigational systems and the like crowd car confines and virtually require a programmer equivalency certificate. What's going on here?

Ask Scott A. Jones. He is a man for these ages, a digital whiz who counts among his most ambitious technofeats the parentage of mass-user voice mail. That's right, it is to Jones whom we send thanks (hit 3 and 8 and then the star sign) when you get caught up in that electronic maelstrom known as customer non-service telephone menu hell. (We wanted to interview Jones but he was either on the phone or unavailable while globe-trotting. We called his people who sound nothing like vox mal's sexy-voiced trollop. We were told to pound pound...)

But to the point, Scott developed a futuristic ride he calls Digital Wheels that verily glows with electronic wizardry. There is more stuff packed into this smoked black ...