A thought on Personal Transportation
The idea of personal transportation has existed for a very long time. Ever since one creature has found a bigger less lazy and intelligent creature to carry them. Man is somewhat unique that in the late 1800’s he invented his own beast of burden now commonly known as the automobile.
The automobile was a giant leap forward in personal transportation. Not only did it run on an unlimited natural resource called oil instead of hay, but you could take up twice as much space on the road to that of a horse. As a bonus automobiles produced emission just like they were mini factories. Carbon emissions made your city look modern and productive. This was much preferred to that of biodegradable horse poo.
As the automobile became more reliable man could travel far distances. He no longer had to worry about the convenience of building little shops within walking distance of his home. Because he loved traveling in his automobile so much he built small roads that went to far away areas. These areas were designated for giant ugly retail establishments that he would not want near his house. Now entire cities could navigate their cars via these small roads called highways to the designated areas for shopping. Man was very cleaver in creation of these roadways. Because the roads can not handle the volume of entire cities trying to go shopping an new wondrous byproduct of the automobile was created. With the invention now known as traffic man had another excuse to spend even more waking hours of the day traveling inside his large motorized vehicle.
With the cheap production of automobiles public transportation and general human happiness has sored to new heights. We have also found that those carbon emissions help trap sunlight in our atmosphere creating an warmer more pleasant climate. This helps to melt those pesky ice caps at both the north and south pools thus creating more water for fish to swim in and more land for people to live on.
Indeed the automobile is such a perfect model of transportation the idea has not needed updating or innovation in over 100 years. Only time can tell what wonderful things this model of transportation has in store for us. Three cheers for the mechanical horse.
Thank you for the lecture on culture and technology. Is this about the fucking viaduct issue in Seattle? I ask because you don’t even live down here. Perhaps you just saw An Inconvenient Truth. Tell us, o Windle, what brings you to this post?
It’s no secret that I dislike cars. I have disliked them for many years and my negative opinion about them generally comes up whenever the subject of transportation is on the table.
My true hate of the automobile really does not stem from anything I mentioned above. What I can not stand is the amount of time I wast while driving. Three out of five of my senses are almost constantly engaged in the activity of maneuvering my car. This includes my top two favorite sight and sound. It is true that I can listen to music while driving but there are always interruptions from other sounds I need to be listening for. This does not allow for an optimal listening experience. Meanwhile looking around my self I can’t help but notice all these other people that want to go to almost the exact same place I do.
I have had a draft post I started typing over a year ago about my ideal vision of how transportation should work. That post looked nothing like the one I have made and mainly was just me whining about how much I hated Seattle traffic and Americans. In a word trains pretty much sum up my ideal vision of how transportation should work. Trains Trains Trains! Take all the roads and highways and replace them with rail tracks. I could probably wright a whole rant on why trains are so awesome but I will leave that for another time.
So instead of whining about Seattle traffic and Americans I have tried to sum up why the automobile sucks in terms that the average person can relate to. I hoped that it would come off as light hearted and amusing by telling the truth with a constant string of falsehoods.
This post was in no way influenced by the viaduct problem in Seattle which truly is a crappy situation. I think my personal opinion at this time is that they should spend more money and do the job correctly rather then simply apply a cheap hack to fix the problem.
My second to last paragraph has probably been influenced by the “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth. My opening sentence in this paragraph was also meant to reflect on the amount of war that has gone on over the control of oil.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject of “why” and that you found my post amusing.
Dude, I totally found your post amusing. I was just wondering what brought it on.
I hate the reality of cars in almost inverse proportion to how much I love driving them. There’s something exhilarating about directing the power from those mechanical horses. That’s why I always volunteer whenever someone has to be the driver. Still, with the way people abuse them and the ecological agony they’re responsible for, cars are definitely of the devil.
As for the viaduct, I’m starting to agree with the opinion that it should be torn down entirely and the money should be sunk into mass transit and improving the surface streets.
No Denmark!!