Perhaps “natural” wasn’t the correct word for technological progress. Obviously this “progress” takes the form of incremental improvements that individuals work on over time. Nonetheless, in the long run, these improvement look like gradual progress (in efficiency, capabilities, power consumption) over time.

What follows is a bit of a digression from the idea of eliminating the private automobile. I’m still working on that problem but if cars are to stay (which they almost certainly are, for now), I have some complaints about the way we make them now.

In the case of automobiles, I think progress is stalled because of all the consolidation that has been going on in the auto industry over the past few decades. The U.S. “big 2 and a half” automakers have basically given up on doing anything innovative and rely on other countries for new technology.

Why does a country (the U.S.) with a population of 300,000,000 and a GDP greater than $10 trillion (10^12 USD) have only two and a half automakers? This oligopoly alone is an impediment to innovation. Don’t you have about as many in Australia (with a population an order of magnitude smaller)?

I’m sure both nations have plenty of people in universities or working in other industries who would love to tackle the problem of improving transportation. So what we’re stuck with in the automobile is basically a highly refined version of a 19th century aristocrat’s toy. If the automobile were redesigned from the top down by 21st century minds, I think it would be a much different sort of beast.

I read a book recently about our (the world’s) energy use and how it is increasing exponentionally. One of the most shocking statements this book made is that in the year 1900, more land was devoted to transportation than is today. The 1900 figure included grazing land for the horses, while today’s figure included all paved roadways and automotive manufacturing facilities and oil refineries, etc.

Also, I’m generally with you on points 1 and 2. I try to cycle to work most days when I haven’t been deprived of sleep by my 7 month old. I have the smallest car that is sensible for my families needs. Harvey the Maz-ota will be registered as a classic car and used only for limited events.

Finally, and this is very, very brief — I might concede that cars (car-culture is something else entirely to me) make possible the worst of urban sprawl but they do not cause it. Not saying that one follows the other but that they are locked together might be better. Also, I will dispute that technology is on a deterministic path of “progress”. But that’s an argument for another time, and possibly another blog

One. Cars are wasteful. Unless you’re hauling people or stuff, it doesn’t make sense to push around a >1000kg object everywhere you go. You’re really transporting your car more than you’re transporting yourself. When I commute to work, most of the cars contain one person each. I think the transportation method should match the purpose. That is, it doesn’t make sense to use a vehicle with the fuel consumption and capabilities that a car has if you’re just driving yourself to work or going to the mall.

Two. Cars don’t scale to the world’s billions. The ecological footprint taken up by an automobile and the infrastructure required to support it is too great for more than a few hundred million people to have cars. Otherwise, land that is currently used for agriculture, human habitation, or nature is used to support cars. I’m not saying this out of an aesthetic concern for pretty birds and flowers. My concern for maintaining the ecological acreage devoted to nature stems from a worry that we will endanger the earth’s regenerative biocapacity. See the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report for more detail.

http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/general/livingplanet/index.cfm

Three. Suburban sprawl is a natural outgrowth of the automobile and car culture. This may be one on which we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I maintain that suburban sprawl wouldn’t exist without car culture and that car culture promotes its existence.

If my plan were really good, it wouldn’t be so easy to find holes in it. I agree with you and others who have pointed out weaknesses; I intend to keep on coming back to it and revising it as appropriate. If my plan were truly robust (and I intend to make it so, eventually), it would show the transition away from the private automobile to be as natural as that from the IBM 360 to the Apple II to the latest Powerbook to whatever fingernail sized device we’ll be using twenty years from now. But I agree, I’m not there yet.