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To frame the situation as 'cars vs gadgets' is missing the bigger picture, and completely ignoring some fundamental reasons for the shift away from car culture. We are a generation of people who grew up in car world. Car world is a boring, homogenous, safe, segregated, sterile, humanless place. In car world, serendipitous engagement with one's community is impossible. In car world, engagement with other humans is always a car drive away. In car world, we spend 20% of our after-tax income just to move around our environment. In car world, every place is the same as every other place--Target, Starbucks, gad stations, same strip malls, same subdivisions.. We grew up watching 'Friends' and 'Seinfeld' on tv. When we have travelled, we've seen places that seemed more interesting, more human, more exciting than the nowhere-vile isolating housing divisions we spent out childhood in. And we want to go to those places, or create them in our own towns. And that's why I don't care about whatever car you're trying to sell me--gadget dock or not. It doesn't deliver on its promise of "freedom". It perpetuates the banality that we grew up in. |