The meaning of "Car Culture"

"... there are many auto-industry executives who maintain that the [electric cars] hype has gotten well ahead of reality. There is no infrastructure, in the form of battery-charging stations, to support pure electric models ..." (times.com)

The skeptical opinions towards the market's readiness for electric cars (and new technology in general) all have a major problem: they all assume that driving patterns and people's needs will stay the same as they have been for the last 50-60 years. While nobody can also predict the opposite, the past suggests some conclusions about people’s attitudes towards new technologies.

Let's think about the meaning of the term "Car Culture". During the last 100 or so years, people have created a lifestyle around the availability of a new technology (cars). When the internal combustion powered cars were still a novelty, only the geeks, eccentrics, and adventurers were excited about them. The traditional view was that they are dirty, noisy, dangerous, and with limited application. And they had a point - back then life was different. For a while horse-drawn buggies and cars shared the roads until people decided they prefer noisy, dirty, and dangerous cars than a horse which was considered mainstream and most suitable for the existing lifestyle. Putting everybody in cars probably seemed pretty far-fetched.

Now, just like then, we have a brand new technology available, which is somewhat of a novelty and does not quite fit our traditional lifestyle. Today's skeptics, just like the ones 100 or so years ago just can't imagine that lifestyles and consumer culture change faster than expected. Newspapers are going away, smoking is not popular anymore, online social networking was not even invented few years ago and now people are making expensive business decisions and planning their careers based on its specifics.

The only concern car makers should have is building and selling a product with what's available today at a reasonable price. Let the market decide if they like it and how to use it.

And enough with the charging stations nonsense argument - electricity is available everywhere. The same goes for "experts" saying that the grid won't handle the load. The only expertise that goes into a statement like that is in short sight. How did the grid successfully adjust to handle the inventions of the electric dryers, freezers, and air-conditioners, and why is charging a battery any bigger challenge than that?

Sore Losers

Are there some lines between pathetic, and dishonest? How far is too far?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sore_loser

http://www.drkutner.com/parenting/articles/sore_loser.html

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sore_loser

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sore+loser

http://www.pyzam.com/funnypictures/details/8393?cat=sports

Killers With Cell Phones

You can see them everywhere - truck drivers, holding a cellphone to their ear, with the other hand on the steering wheel. There is all kinds of talk on the news and in private conversations about dangerous teenagers, talking and texting behind the wheel, but you don't hear so much about semi truck drivers doing the same.
Several states are trying to solve this by imposing fines on drivers caught using a handheld phone, but that must be hard to achieve when the trucks are zooming at 70+ mph on the interstate.

Over a century old idea promises bright future

video
Story: Fox News: California Utility to Capture Solar Power in Space
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Take:
Why does it have to take over 100 years for the humanity to take advantage of good ideas?

PBS: Tesla - Master of Lighting
More than 100 years ago, the Croatian-born American inventor Nikola Tesla demonstrated transmitting electrical energy over a distance.

In 1900 "Of the 4,192 cars produced in the United States 28 percent are powered by electricity, and electric autos represent about one-third of all cars found on the roads of New York City, Boston, and Chicago."(PBS Timeline: History of Electric Car)

What other good ideas are still laying around not used to their full potential for whatever reason?

The Impact of Social Networking

Story: TG DAily: "Facebook dumbs you down"
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Take:
This new social phenomenon is impacting the most impressionable part of the society in a less than positive way. While hijacking the good name of technology and limiting our kids' imagination and desire for knowledge, it provides the perfect anonymity for predators, who otherwise would have not had the guts to approach a child. Further more, by empowering pointless narcissistic drivel, those websites encourage a culture of false popularity, achieved by often disclosing private information, bullying, or publishing materials that can easily ruin someones life and career.
Sales professionals have embraced this phenomenon as a platform to influence markets. HR managers are looking for qualities like "fluent in Myspace". Good move - while Asians and Europeans are encouraging interest in engineering and science, we are boning up on MySpace and Twitter "skills". There is no way they become more advanced than us, right? (sarcasm).
Some companies are even conducting research and building marketing strategies, spending real money, based on questionable deductions from what a bunch of adolescents clicked on while bored out of their minds. I hope those sales folks build a loyal customer base because in few years, when those kids grow up and get low paying fast food jobs, due to lack of real skills, knowledge, and drive, they will have very limited disposable income to buy foreign-made cars, electronics, and everything else for living, which we'll have to import because there is not enough qualified work force to produce it at home. Then, it will take a lot of selling to low-income buyers to keep that sales job safe.