A few years ago, I read a Richard Dawkins book called "The Extended Phenotype". There was a section where Dawkins said we should seriously regard cars as a virus, which exploits human behavior and reproductive machinery to replicate itself.

I remembered this, and it got me thinking...

The virus ("the car") infects the "cells" (cities) of its host ("the earth") and packs the cells with copies of itself. This is similar to the phenomenon seen in Ebola, called "bricking" where everything in the cell is converted to virus, and it ruptures with bricks of crystal-like virus. In the terminal state, the entire body has been converted to bleeding bricks of virus.

This would be the equivalent of using all our productive effort to pack the surface of the earth with cars. We are dying because the virus has turned our entire body into cars.

It's very suspicious because cars don't really do anything. They're just pure consumption. Nothing tangible is created by driving from point A to point B. This would become painfully clear in the terminal state. We end up drowning in a sea of car carcasses, where there's nothing to drive to except other points in the sea of car carcasses. Our body got consumed by virus and we died.

Cars are like a Trojan horse computer virus. They appeal to people's vanities, so people "click" on them. The virus is using that behavior to replicate itself.

Ironically, the car production statistics are the equivalent of the "viral count" readings AIDS patients get. Its burrowed so deeply into our collective "psychology" that it is outsmarting us. The medium is the message. The car (a stupid object!) is calling the shots, not us.

Interesting point. It could also be said that "automobility" is a viral meme: the idea of convenient & comfortable transportation is self-replicating and highly infectious.

As for "cars do nothing really," I'm not sure I agree. They do after all provide comfortable and convenient transportation.

If you want to be strict about it, you can take one of the rules from Spencer Brown's calculus of indications: "to cross a boundary twice is not to cross." In other words, going somewhere and coming back, in and of itself, is the equivalent of not having gone in the first place.

Now in a practical sense, we all know that going to the grocery store, one comes back with bags of groceries, which is not the same result as "not having gone" to the grocery store.

But in Brown's terms, what happens is that the bags of groceries cross the boundary once: coming from the grocery store to the house. Only the driver/shopper and the car cross the boundary twice, and this is only necessary so that s/he can select the groceries to carry home.

This provides a useful algorithm for parsing transportation itself from the needs that presently call for transportation. As a generalization, one could say that each "object" should cross a boundary only once.

So, for example, the shopper could go to the store only once, to make selections and note them in some way, and thereafter could send in grocery orders via phone or web, which in turn would be delivered (by a plug-in hybrid or electric truck, or perhaps even by horse & wagon or pedal-powered carrier) from the grocery store. In fact this system has been in use for ages in Manhattan, and there are some reasonably successful efforts to replicate it elsewhere. Shopping via internet, in general, is another case in point, as is telecommuting.

So, to restate, the general hypothesis is that efficiency is improved when each "object" crosses each "boundary" only once. Let's see if we can find any good counterexamples, and see if they invalidate the hypothesis.

The question is ludicrous.

When I want to get this spastic pseudo-philosophical bullshit I'll watch the Matrix...

Quick! Raise you hands!

How many here are going to continue whining about the gas guzzling 320HP Cadillac STS that was used for racing too the hospital at 1:00 AM this morning to save your life after your heart gave out?

OK, now anybody with their hand raised please use it to smack yourself in the head as the lovely Cadillac is part of the machine that afforded you such luxuries as life this morning.

Actually, it's normally the other way round, a resuscitation team will come round. And in public places nowadays, they have some basic resuscitation equipment and somebody trained to use it for such emergencies. Running around isn't necessarily the best way of dealing with dying people.

Doly,

I meant the lovely STS belonging too the good doctor used for racing to the hospital where the patient already was and no amount of resuscitation equipment would help as a Happy Meal gob of plaque ruptured in the right coronary artery causing clotting enough to kill quickly which the good doctor reopened & fixed, even though the patient flat-lined twice in the middle of it all.

But long talons are what created the greatest country in the history of the planet in just a few short years giving us unthinkable advances in science, technology, & medicine along the way and riches only known by royalty in the past.

Long talons are good except for a few things such as the slight embarrassment one endures having all the other wannabes stare the whole time you are in the locker room shower!

no. neither cars, planes, trains, nor wagons are a virus. But from a Gaian perspective, the human infrastructure is a cancer. My friend proposed a new species--industrie homo noma, the industrial growth. Within this paradigm I propose that humans are more like the RNA in the cell (or perhaps Prions?), i.e. we are the messengers . . . of death. So in this model, Jimmy Buffet, Ecotourism, and skateboarders represent the pioneer cells invading a previously uninfected corner of Gaia. They create the microclimate for the general tourist population that leads ultimately to suburbanization and Gaian necrosis.

pete

Cars are fascinating objects, from a social and psychological point of view, to a commercialism and political point of view.

Are they a virus? Possibly. They have become a de facto object of desire, especially for young men, and increasingly for women. There are essentially status based objects that people are willing to throw more money at than almost anything in the name of convenience. They are the most inefficient way of moving people and goods about both in terms of energy and space. The only reason the concept of a car is so powerful and survives is because of human psychology:

- People like status based objects
- They like freedom and convenience
- They are a way to show off wealth and take control
- They excite through speed, looks and comfort.

Ultimately they are extension of the person driving. In reality their sole plus point is flexibility. As a form of transport they are dire and if you were designing the perfect transport system you would never build it around cars. Why?

- They are space inefficient. The maximum flow of any grade separated highway is around 1800 vehicles per hour. Because cars are personal transportation, by their very nature they tend to have 1 person in. However people still like to buy large cars because of 1) Status 2) Ability to transport one’s friends and family 3) Comfort and stability. On a standard highway with junctions, 500-800 vehicles per hour is the normal. About a train or plane load of passengers per hour or several buses.

- They are energy inefficient. Cars can never be ‘green’ or reduce congestion because they have a virtue of convenience. They make people lazy and travel more than they would normally. Because of this convenience they are rarely full and are much large in terms of space and use of energy than they should.

- They are socially exclusive. The car based culture has produced disproportionate disadvantages for those than cannot drive through health, ability or wealth. Other forms of transport where flow is not so great can never wash their face financially since the birth of cars. Therefore cars put rural areas at a huge disadvantage both through limited transport, skills drains and population drains to urban areas.

- They produce inefficient urban sprawl. Towns laid out for cars are far larger than those formed in the days of tramways or rail. Cars need more road space and their housing requires more space than would otherwise be needed. Because of sprawl development there is an ongoing demand for this type of space and fuel inefficient transport.

- They cause death and misery. The United Kingdom has some of the safest roads in the world. Even though, around 3500 lose their lives on the roads each year and 270,000 people are injured, equal to a town the size of Plymouth. This misery has huge health and legal costs, it reduces GDP, causes depression, long term illness and wrecked lives. The media is surprisingly tolerant to drivers, the cruel trick being the myth that drivers are in control of their own destiny on the roads. Nothing could be further from the truth. This method of transport has massively different standards of operation, security and safety. Drivers on roads are at the mercy of other drivers, who may lack ability, be under the influence of drink or drugs, may not have their vehicles serviced or repaired correctly or may have their driving distracted.

- Cars presently run on a finite resource. The cost in terms of resource wars, subsidy and pollution is immense and is rarely figured into real costs.

- Cars and their traffic control have produced divisions between the police and the public. Many drivers feel victims because of their propensity to make mistakes. All other forms or transport are heavily controlled: Rail, Air, Water and the rules of operation rigorously enforced. Yet drivers feel ‘got at’ as they do not regard themselves as professionals out on the road. There is evidence to suggest many drivers regard the police as an enemy rather than a mere facet of the state who have the rule of law of their safety at high regard - less co-operation with the police can more crime. Cars are themselves a huge source of crime, both in terms of dangerous driving, theft and their use in crime itself. Indeed road freight is a huge source of crime, whereas the problem for air and rail is almost non existent. Drivers feel safer using cars, yet the evidence suggests you are far more likely to be a victim of crime than a non car user.

- Households with a car very often need a second wage earner in order to buy, run and service these vehicles. This puts single and low income and households where one person can only work at huge disadvantage. In households with a car where two people are at work, one just for the car itself there is a corresponding social cost in terms of childcare and quality time where both people are out of the house for large portions of the day. Poor child upbringing can lead to further social problems.

- Cars have health effects in terms of less exercise leading to obesity related illness. Professional car drivers, like taxi drivers, have been known to suffer health effects cramped in their vehicles all day. Car based pollution kills around 24,000 people in Britain per year.

I could probably write a whole book on why cars are our ‘greatest mistake’. In the pursuit of status and convenience they have caused immense damage to our society. Can societies survive without cars? Certainly. The obvious examples are India and China, where car ownership is low. But even advanced countries like Japan, mass transit forms a vital and important backbone to the whole society. Even where mass transport is not available, the most efficient form of transport ever invented in terms of cost, space, and energy can still be used: The Bicycle.

"not having gone to the grocery store"
The illusion of progress: When I was a kid in Indiana, around 50 years ago, my grandmother would ring central on the phone and then tell the operator she wanted the grocery--no "dialing". Central would connect, then mamaw would tell the clerk what groceries were needed. In about a half hour a Ford panel truck would pull up and a kid in a white monkey suit would bring the groceries inside, set them on the kitchen table, and then mamaw would sign the CREDIT SLIP. At the month's end we would get the bill.
Try doing this today.

I never really gave much more thought to cars other than them being a means to get from point A to point B.

I have a hard time understanding how people get so wrapped up in an item that depreciates at such a rapid rate.

Economically … it is an exercise in futility to buy a new car every two years. My cousin is a sales manager for a large car dealership in MI. He revels in raping the ‘wide eyed-gotta have it’ types that are already upside down in their current car loan.

... sign here