counterproductivity

You once heard a mullah say: "I am a revolutionary!" and you instinctively thought to yourself: no revolutionary would use the word "I".

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What constitutes the freedom of the open road? To not go anywhere, but just escape; even better, to just be nowhere. Nothing constitutes it: freedom is not a substantive concept...Augustine: a lonely freedom, cowboy mentality. The road don't bridge no distances: there ain't no Oakland when you get to Oakland.

An old car advert: 'Bringing nearer those close to your heart'. 

An old song: 'We're on the road to nowhere'

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Illich: how much time and money do we spend traveling? To what end? If time is money and you add up the time expended in producing cars, the time needed to work to pay for one, the journey time, the costs to the environment, the dullness that is produced by driving a car, the stresses and anxiety that result from driving, the deaths caused by reckless driving, the costs to social living, then is the car really "efficient" or is it counterproductive?

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The idea was that technology (in this case, the internet) would connect us all (or at least we'd be able to swap our pictures). We'd be able to learn in a 30-second segment run by Aunty what exactly is happening in South America or why those black kids in the Horn of Africa still have flies on their emaciated faces. I have a thousand "friends", 200 'likes', 10,000 songs and books somewhere, a cool thou. films on my hard drives but my brain is so frazzled I haven't even got the time to catch my breath let alone delve into a bit of culture. I've said two words to a human being all day: "Tea, please". If I could just add: "fine weather, today, isn't it?" I'd be a white man. 

On the back of technology the press would usher in the new democracy. Je suis...

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'To settle on the auto-industry as the instrument for achieving jobs, the grand cultural purpose of life..Automobiles, for those who could afford them, were loaded with references and romances [roamances?]from earlier American purposes and meanings of life: independence, freedom, the success of getting a better car than one's parents could afford...'

---Jane Jacobs.

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What's new to say about the sexism: same old, same old. But the Real Man finds himself in the wilderness, away from women and kids and black people (come to think of it, has there ever been a black person shown driving a car?).