The manufacture of cars is apparently in danger of grinding to a halt, not because of a lack of steel, or rubber, or even plastic, but because there is a shortage of microchips. For drivers of my generation this sounds ridiculous. We suspect that our cars have microchips in them, because everything more complicated than a can opener does. Even my own ancient Honda may have a computer hidden somewhere inside it, because the car does the kind of inexplicable things that can only be blamed on a computer. The windows go up and down, lights and screen wipers go on and off without any human intervention and odd warning lights appear on the dashboard. The warning lights are easily defeated by a piece of duct tape, but the other jokes played by the hidden computer are annoying, and unnecessary.