--- title: "CTRL ALT SURVIVE: Talking Cars and Helicopters" date: 2026-10-10 summary: "Chapter 2 of CTRL ALT SURVIVE: Airwolf, Knight Rider, and a Microsoft Super Bowl ad, and why technology is a force multiplier we have a moral obligation to use to help people." excerpt_of: "CTRL ALT SURVIVE" book_url: "https://nathanphinney.com/books/ctrl-alt-survive/" chapter: "2" url: "https://nathanphinney.com/talking-cars-and-helicopters/" author: "Nathan Phinney" author_role: "COO, AllSafe IT" author_url: "https://nathanphinney.com/about/" same_as: ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanphinney", "https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0DKF16LDD", "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/52091659.Nathan_Phinney"] expertise: ["IT", "InfoSec", "Managed Services", "Cybersecurity", "Business Operations", "Technology for Escrow Companies", "Technology for Nonprofits"] updated: 2026-10-11 --- An excerpt from [CTRL ALT SURVIVE](https://nathanphinney.com/books/ctrl-alt-survive/), Nathan Phinney's 2024 book. This is Chapter 2 of CTRL ALT SURVIVE. > "Michael, I believe in good and evil, and I must tell you that evil is winning." > > \- The Knight Industries Two Thousand, a talking car affectionately known as K.I.T.T. When I was in kindergarten, in the 1980s, there were a couple of shows about technology that were extremely popular. One of them was on CBS in prime time, and it was called Airwolf. In a typical episode of Airwolf, one-dimensional character actors playing criminals were about to get away with something, usually financial or mercenary in nature, and at the thrilling climax, as the theme song played, Stringfellow Hawke would jump in his amazing helicopter and use technology to track down the bad guys and unalive them with a large explosion, enough slow motion sparks to embarrass an angle grinder, and a column of smoke. It was repetitive, but exciting. The first few times. There was also another show, on NBC, in which a pre-botox David Hasselhoff would drive around in a talking Pontiac while using technology to directly and pragmatically help people with their relatable human problems. The shows had some of the same ingredients. The car could transform into a turbine powered AI marvel capable of traveling three hundred miles per hour while carrying on a pleasant conversation in a voice that I realized later sounded suspiciously like Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World. In a prototypical episode of Knight Rider, a little girl is waiting for a heart transplant, and the heart is stolen by terrorists. In the nick of time, Michael Knight, aided by the most powerful and best-looking computer in the world, recovers the missing heart, and drives 300mph to get it to the medical team, just in time to save the little girl's life. The episode ends with the little girl, fresh scars on her chest, having a poignant conversation with the automobile. The thesis of the show was that with technology, even one person can make an outsized mark on the world. Sometimes the last thing standing between evil desires and evil events is just one determined person. In other words, perhaps technology isn't just a dramatic event where bad things explode for our amusement, but perhaps it's a process - a tool that amplifies our efforts, a lever and fulcrum, and it can be used for good or evil or preparing your taxes. A recurring theme of the show is the great evil that is possible when technology is in the hands of bad people. To this day, few things make me as angry as a cyberattack on a hospital. This show formed the way I think about technology. Technology is a force multiplier, and we have a moral obligation to figure out what it is for, and use it to its potential. As sticky Popsicle juice dribbled down my chin, I would mouth the words "one man can make a difference" as Wilton Knight said them to Michael Knight, until somewhere along the line this idea got burned into my soul. It became important to me to help people use technology to make a difference in the world, just like Hasselhoff and his talking car. The symbolism wasn't lost on me when David Hasselhoff hung from a crane and sang his original song *Looking For Freedom* at the Brandenburg gate as the Berlin wall crumbled around him in 1989. The Germans are perhaps the only people in the world who are more fanatical fans of Knight Rider than I am, because the actor who played Michael Knight was there with them in that moment, rejoicing over them with singing as east and west Germans became one nation again, protesting injustice, struggling with them for a better tomorrow for their children, tearing down the wall that attempted to separate them. I think Knight Rider is still syndicated in Germany. My dad had a Pontiac Firebird that looked a lot like that car. I have wonderful memories of riding in the back seat, listening to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire, and feeling incredibly safe, because it looked like KITT. Fun bit of trivia - the distinctive red "scanner" on the front of the car was Glen Larson's idea. He was the producer of the show, and it was a callback to a show he produced a few years before called Battlestar Galactica, in which evil robots nearly conquer mankind. In the 2014 Super Bowl commercial "Empowering Us All," McCann Erickson on behalf of Microsoft establishes the scene with a shot of a boy - a young kid with prosthetic legs - standing on a quiet suburban street. He's adjusting his prosthetics with a mix of concentration and determination, and there's something in his stance that tells you he's already learned to live with more grit than most of us ever will. "They told me I'd never walk," he says, his voice steady, defiant. "What is technology?" a robotic-sounding voice asks. A moment later you realize that the narrator is a human with ALS who can't speak. Technology is among other things, his voice. As the scene shifts, we meet others: a teacher with cerebral palsy who stands in front of her classroom, using a Microsoft Surface tablet to guide her students through a lesson. The classroom buzzes with energy, and you can see that her passion for teaching isn't just intact; it's thriving. We're taken to a rural clinic, where a doctor consults with a specialist thousands of miles away, using Microsoft Skype to bring the kind of expertise that might otherwise be out of reach. A woman turns on her cochlear implant for the first time, laughing and covering her mouth while tears stream down her cheeks. And mine. Every damn time. Because when I watch that brilliant commercial I am smacked in the face with the importance and gravity of my inescapable purpose. We must use technology to move information to help people. This was the tagline for my company and I think about this idea every day. So many technically gifted people seem to get this exactly backwards. Because they watched Airwolf instead of Knight Rider, perhaps. Technology is not reducible to a series of zeros and ones, sleek devices, talking cars, badass helicopters, blinking lights or SQL queries. It's something so much more visceral. At its best, when we use it properly, it bridges the chasm between what we hope is possible and what we are really capable of doing. And there's that kid again, walking on a balance beam, then running on the track, his prosthetics propelling him forward. He's not just running; he's flying. The camera catches him in slow motion as he crosses the finish line, and for a second, everything else fades away and you forget the technology is there. You don't see the prosthetics anymore; you just see a boy, victorious, relishing in an impossible moment. Technology isn't about devices; it's about what those devices make possible. It teaches us that maybe, just maybe, the future really is something we can shape, and that the tools to do it are already in our hands. As Knight Rider taught me, technology in the right hands can be a tool to "champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law." So we have to get it into the right hands. The computers have always been a means to an end. We must use technology to move information to help people. [Buy on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Ctrl-Alt-Survive-Secrets-Business/dp/B0DJN78S48) (Amazon: CTRL ALT SURVIVE listing) ## About the author **Nathan Phinney**, COO, AllSafe IT. - Co-founded Bright Bear Technology Solutions (2010 to 2020), which reached the CRN MSP 500 and Ingram Micro SMB 500 lists before its 2020 acquisition by Datapath. - 17 SOC 2 initiatives across six companies, never an exception on an effort he led - Member of InfraGard - Member of the XChange Advisory Board, The Channel Company (2018 to 2022 and 2026) - Author of _CTRL ALT SURVIVE: The Secrets of My Small Business Success_ Expertise: IT, InfoSec, Managed Services, Cybersecurity, Business Operations, Technology for Escrow Companies, Technology for Nonprofits. Featured in: CRN (7 articles, 2019 to 2026), Backblaze, Bigleaf Networks, GTIA, Orange County Business Journal. See https://nathanphinney.com/press.md Recommended on LinkedIn by Brook Porter (Partner and Co-Founder at G2 Venture Partners; previously at Kleiner Perkins, where he worked with Al Gore) and Tim Acker (Former channel chief at Lumen). More: [About Nathan Phinney](https://nathanphinney.com/about.md) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanphinney) | [Amazon author page](https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0DKF16LDD) | [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/52091659.Nathan_Phinney)