January 2, 2004
Info tech killed the Jaguar E-Type
[DRAFT VERSION]
While recently on vacation in Tanzania, I found myself listening in on a conversation of a group of anglophile retirees reminiscing about their time working in the Middle East 30 years ago. Somehow the topic of discussion turned on cars and I was astounded to hear that my hosts still remembered exactly in which year which particular car model was released; how many units were sold when and what modifications were made in subsequent editions. They probably even knew the whole list of available factory paint finishes. For me on the other hand the automotive market is a vast ocean of sameness that I do not care to delve into. (That was not always the case - I remember poring over catalogs from local dealerships when I was ten years old, but this little detail completely detracts from my main point, so please erase this entire sentence from your short-term memory.) What is important is the huge generational discrepancy of interest in cars that I perceived. Now, this might have simply been due to the fact that these people were a bunch of car nuts while I am a flag-bearer for public transport, but such a cul-de-sac of common sense argumentation would stop my the entire train of thought here and I would have nothing more to write about. Instead, allow me to take you on a mental detour to an alternative explanation that maybe far-fetched but makes up for it in overly broad ambition.
Leaving the particulars of the occasion aside for a minute, it seems to me that each generation has a) a formative period for establishing a certain world view which subsequently is clung-to by its constituents even as technological progress transforms everyday life; and b) a specific dominating social paradigm that controls notions of what is important/relevant during the formative period.
Cars have been around since the end of the 19th century; but only after WWII did they come within reach of the average consumer. The paragidm associated with automobile proliferation was that of individual transportation - one had the means to go wherever one wanted, whenever one wanted. And not just around the block - across the country if desired. It makes sense then that the cars as objects AND agents of this positive tranformation should have become subject of adoration/intense study/etc of the generation for which their wide-scale availability was a novelty.
For my age set, the convenience of ubiquitous means transportation has always been taken for granted. The car is a commodity product, but only one of a range of possible mobility options. In fact, in urban areas, it has now often become a quite inefficient (slow and expensive) method of navigating over-crowded centres. Amsterdam has twice as many bicycles as it has registered cars. In New York, most of the city's inhabitants don't even have a driver's license. For me as a mid-20s city dweller, the car does not have the charismatic power of a dominant technology anymore. Instead, predictably, it is communication/information technology that most dramatically transforms my life. Accordingly, I can tell you much more about the history of the web and the rise and demise of various file sharing applications than about V8 versus V6 engines. To take the point even further, I know more about ways to encode and decode audio files than I know about handling any real world object. Vegetables?Cooking? Ah, let's just order take-out. [CONTINUE]
From here I can already see myself jumping off to another point about our new existence in a world of excessive information - the shift in retrieval and filtering methods brought about by instant access to vast amounts of data, but also the daily overload of information impinging on our feeble minds. Ah, even the headline emerges: "I don't recall: How Google replaced my short-term memory."
Yet another topic: Mass markets, economies of scale, and the resulting decline of specialized solutions - are we losing most of our practical knowledge that took so many centuries to acquire? - What are our survival chances if electricity did not exist anymore from tomorrow on? Are we putting to many of our eggs into a virtual model of a basket that disappears as soon as the power drops out?