Into this environment came a new technology for transporting both people and products. Rather than using a horse or a steam engine to pull it, this new transportation technology used an internal combustion engine to propel it. It was a self-propelled vehicle; it was an auto-mobile. But most people of the time could only understand it in terms of the transportation infrastructure with which they were familiar; and in those terms, it was a vehicle missing a horse: a horseless carriage. Many aspects of this new technology were described in terms of the dominant technology. The output of the engine was measured in "horsepower". And early versions of the engine throttle valve control were called "harnesses" because they were used to harness the speed of the engine and thus of the vehicle.
At the turn of the century, it was not convenient to own one of these new horseless carriages. There were few places even in cities -- and none in rural areas -- to buy kerosene and oil for the engine; and not much of this type of petroleum product was even produced for burning in engines (it was for lamps and lanterns). If something on the vehicle broke, it was a rare blacksmith who could fix it. The unpaved roads made not only for very bumpy rides, but also resulted in a good number of outings coming to an end with the vehicle stuck in the mud. And this in turn often resulted in the indignity of having to hitch a couple of horses up to the horseless carriage to pull it onto firmer ground. And all of the early contests arranged between this new self-propelled technology and horses ended with the horse or horse-drawn vehicle victorious. One had to be either visionary or stubborn (or both) to want to own an automobile during these early days, for one would very often hear the derisive cry of, "Get a horse!".
This situation is not unusual in the evolution of new technologies or even new concepts. At the turn of the last century, the horse and carriage was an older, mature technology nearing the end of the "S - curve" of its development cycle, while the automobile was still a nascent technology
just at the beginning of its development cycle. The transition was not smooth from one to the other. To trade in your horse for a car at this point put you at a distinct disadvantage and resulted in fewer benefits, reduced efficiency and increased difficulties. It was only much later that the evolution of this new technology turned the tables in the contests between horse and automobile. After many years of development in the area of automotive technologies, travel by automobile became faster, more reliable and more convenient than travel by horse and wagon or horse and carriage.
This increase in speed and convenience was also achieved as a result of considerable modification of the surrounding environment to accommodate this new technology. Feed stores, blacksmith shops, and watering troughs were replaced by service stations on nearly every corner, making the fueling and repair of automobiles much easier. Carriage houses, hitching posts and stables were replaced by garages and parking lots. Roads and streets were paved to make the automobile ride more comfortable and faster. And the smell of fresh manure slowly faded from the urban experience. All of these changes to the benefit of automotive technology made life increasingly difficult for those who still owned a horse as their primary means of transportation.
It took many years, decades in fact, to begin to understand the full impact of this new technology upon our lives. Gone was the smell of manure, but it was replaced in most cities with the deadly stench and reddish brown haze of exhaust fume air pollution. The paved roads -- in particular the "freeways" -- made travel smoother and faster, but also resulted in an annual automobile death toll in the U.S. alone of almost 100,000, with additional millions of non-fatal injuries. The road building boom that made it easier for us to travel quickly and easily to almost any point in a city also destroyed neighborhoods and turned the central urban core of many cities into inner-city ghettos.6 The desire to have convenient parking for our cars almost everywhere also caused frequent flash flooding from rain runoff and turned many cities into "heat islands" that literally created their own weather.
We eventually began to understand the full impact of the automobile upon our lives and the environment. We came to recognize that this technology was out of control and doing more harm than good in some cases. And so we developed emission control devices and standards, mandated the use of unleaded gasoline, installed seat belts, car seats and airbags, and required environmental impact studies before new roads could be built and prior to paving over more of the landscape. Almost one hundred years after it came upon the scene and fifty years after it replaced almost all other modes of land travel, we have begun to gain some semblance of control over this "new" transportation technology. It still kills many of us each year (but "only" around 50,000 in recent years) and still results in millions of acres of land being paved over, but at least we seem to understand what is happening and can choose to allow these events to take place.
This technology has also transformed almost every aspect of the way we live and work and play. Everyone dreams of owning their own home on their own piece of property and enjoying a suburban lifestyle. There is a drive-in version of almost everything: restaurants, cleaners, movies, churches, banks; you name it and you can probably drive up to something and use it without getting out of your car. With only rare exceptions we do not go into the city to shop but instead "go to the mall" and we have fled the high rises of central cities in droves to work instead in "office parks". We talk about ourselves and our lives in terms derived from the lexicon of the automotive technology: living "life in the fast lane", making sure we are "in the driver's seat", "blowing a gasket" when we are mad, etc. And perhaps worst of all, we have come to accept a largely invisible and almost totally insane organization of our time and capital resources.
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