SUVs, Scooters and Survival

GM cut 15,000 jobs this week. Said nobody wants to buy sedans any more. That’s why they’re closing factories in Michigan and Ohio and Ontario, Canada. They have no market for their Impalas, Volt, etc..

Ford Motor Company is also getting out of the sedan business. They have no market for the Taurus, etc.. 

People want to drive big SUVs, built on truck chassis, and pickup trucks have always been a staple down here in Texas. 

I see a lot of super-clean pickup trucks—Ford F-150, Chevy pickups and Dodge Ram pickup trucks. These pickups with not a single scratch in the bed and a pristine paint job indicate a lot of white collar guys with no calluses on their hands buy pickups. Many of these wannabe cowboy wish to stay connected to their salt-of-the-earth roots. Just an observation…

But, now it seems soccer Moms need to a SUV to ride high and have enough steel to make mom feel safe. Kind of like the Cold War weapons escalation from the 1960s. Soviet Union has 50 nukes, we Americans need 100 nukes. 

Translate the Cold War to the Car War escalations of today’s consumer. You get a big car, I need a bigger car, now I need a truck (SUV).

However, I do seen sedans on the road—and most seem to be either European of Japanese. Toyota sells tons of cameras. High end sedans still have appeal. Look at all those Audi and Lexus sedans zipping down the highway. GM and Ford do not bother to address this side of the equation. Their strength is building pickup trucks and SUVs and they are sticking to it.

The scooter phenomenon is a counter-weight to the rise in truck popularity. The city streets are now littered with scooters—magically arrived from some corporate source—ad placed on the sidewalks for all to consider. A credit card app gets the scooter moving. The brave then stand astride the scooter and take their chances on transportation sans protection. 

This very interesting scooter development parallels the increased use of bikes, also a risky pursuit, on our fast-moving public streets. Bikers mostly feature helmets and some use proper illumination at night. 

Scooter and bike people may be making a grand effort to save the planet. They will give you alternative explanations but I think the core idea, “let’s pollute less,” exists behind their transportation choices.

The New York Times has been tackling global climate change as a major target of their publication. I immersed myself in the recent article, “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here.” 

Here is the link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html

Do not let the title fool you—this is a human apocalypse, generated by mankind and foisted on all living things. The numbers of insects has declined significantly. Many other species have declined also.

The decreased insect population saddened me. We have all experienced the plenitude of nature. Maybe you have been in an apple orchard at harvest time? I have seen massive pecan crops on good years in Central Texas. 

Nature is no respecter of modest bounds. The California wildfires show us Nature’s limitless strength. Yet we have managed to throttle nature and toss it into an emergency state, a state with the intensity of cars racing headlong down the freeway, hell bent to get to work on time.

Mankind’s ambitious, restless personality, set on survival and prosperity and domination, has dwarfed even the Eden we were born into it. Look at Mars for alternate housing. Not good!

If you love the planet and share even a modicum of goodwill for all the other species, the Times article should get your attention.

McLuhan Predicts Cellphone: New Yorker magazine, May 5, 1965

Marshall McLuhan’s prominence in the Sixties and early Seventies cannot easily be conceived from the remove of the present day.  The New Yorker magazine issue, May 5, 1965 features “The McLuhan Metaphor,” in the “The Talk of the Town” section. The piece was composed at the same time as the  the New York World’s Fair. 

The New Yorker journalist suggests Marshall McLuhan might be better employed as the Time Capsule for the era rather than using “cultural and technological mementos of twentieth-century man.” McLuhan actually taught us more about what was about to happen in the 21^stcentury.

My family visited the World’s Fair that year. I recall Ford and General Motors lavish futuristic exhibits. The two giant car manufacturers reflect the the mechanical age. —The exhibits imagined an automotive future with Jetsons-esque highways flying in every direction. The dioramas didn't portray gridlock, but you don't focus on the negative at a World's Fair exhibit. But McLuhan envisioned something different, an information age—and a massive change in consciousness.

The New Yorkerauthor describes McLuhan’s lecture at Spencer Memorial Church in Brooklyn and quotes several startling prophecies included in his remarks: 

“(He) predicted a happy day when everyone will have his own portable computer to cope with the dreary business of digesting information” and

“Dr. McLuhan next suggested the possibility of a new technology that would extend consciousness itself into the environment. ‘A kind of computerized ESP,’ he called it, envisioning ‘consciousness as the corporate content of the environment—and eventually maybe even a small portable computer, about the size of a hearing aid, that would process our private experience through the corporate experience, the way dreams do now.’”

McLuhan’s accurately prediction computers the size of cellphones or smaller. Marshall gets points for the accuracy of that alone, but the second insight--consciousness as the new environment-- cuts to the very essence of the present digital era.  McLuhan’s hearing aid- size device anticipates the iPhone pretty closely. Individuals study the phone and share experiences as a corporate entity creating a group consciousness. The posts are exactly as McLuhan described, personal, random thoughts offered in a dreamlike manner. McLuhan perceived the new electronic environment as consciousness— and no better description exists of the modern social network. 

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The 1965 The New Yorkerwriter notes McLuhan entered the scene as an author, “by three startling books on Western civilization-- The Mechanical Bride, The Gutenberg Galaxy, and most recently Understanding Media, in which he joyfully explores the tribal virtues of popular culture, casts a cynical eye on the ‘classification traditions’ that came in with print and sees near-mythic possibilities in our computer age.” (The New Yorker 1965)

Mcluhan’sUnderstanding Media  examines a different medium in every chapter and chapter 31, titled “Television,” commented on television’s highly participatory nature as a “cool medium.” Television’s language contrasted to “hot media” like print or movies with their tendency for “’spelling out’ of meanings.” (UM 319) Television’s message, conveyed in low density, left much room for participation of the viewer. 

He identified participation as a key differentiating factor between the print media and the electronic media. Print media, based on the visual sense, allowed for detachment and objectivity. Television shifted the audience to a multi-sensory experience, emphasizing the tactile and acoustic, and lead to in-depth engagement.

“Because the low definition of TV insures a high degree of audience involvement, the most effective programs are those that present situations which consist of some process to be completed.” (UM 319)

McLuhan’s predictions for deepened audience engagement following the shift from print media to electronic media cannot be overstated as essential to understanding the electronic environment. The inability of individuals to separate from the social network becomes more apparent by the day. As McLuhan somehow knew-- we have become enslaved.  FOMO or “fear of missing out” is society's most prevalent psychological addiction in 2018.

McLuhan’s notion of new technology working as extensions of the human body had achieved new levels of traction in the electronic era, for if clothing extended the skin, and the wheel extended the legs’ ability to achieve movement, “the computer achieved not merely an extension of our eyes, like print, but an extension of our whole nervous system.”  (New Yorker1965)

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