One of the primary criticisms leveled against people who advocate less car use is that we are anti-progress. If you choose to walk or bike, instead of drive your car, you are a viewed as a neo-luddite who wants to return society to a simpler time before modern technology took over our lives. To most people, the car has become an indispensable tool in the forward march of our existence, and if you choose to do without a car, you might as well step aside, because modern society is going to leave you behind. The reality is that we have all been hoodwinked, conditioned from decades of advertising and public policy designed to permanently ensconce the car in our lives. As I state in my Manifesto, I believe the car is actually an impediment to progress, and the car’s central role in our lives is maintained by the extraordinary efforts of the many interests which benefit from our car dependence.

Stunted Growth

A vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine has existed in some form since the early 1800s, although more rudimentary designs for the automobile and internal combustion engine existed even earlier. The first automobile powered by the modern internal combustion engine was introduced in Germany in the 1880s, and mass production of automobiles began right after the turn of the century. After this promising burst of innovation, the technological progress of the car took a right turn and headed in a different direction: design. For most of the past century, automakers have focused almost exclusively on what they call design, but really is just packaging. The fundamental technology under the hood remains at least 100 years old. Some may quibble with this claim, because a car engine looks very different than it did a century ago. Car engines are certainly better built and more reliable than their early ancestors, but the basic plumbing is still the same.

During this same 100 year time period, this country has witnessed profound innovation. We learned how to fly and can now travel nearly anywhere around the globe in a matter of hours. We of course traveled to the moon and now have spacecraft that send images from distant planets and galaxies. We have rid the world of most major diseases and have to capability to develop medicines to treat almost any malady. And in the last 25 years alone, we have witnessed the rise of the personal computer and the internet, which have combined to release whole new forms of innovation and empower people worldwide. In short, the last century has been the greatest period of innovation in the history of mankind, and the auto industry has simply been a bystander.

I liken the automobile to the typewriter. When I went off to college, I was the last class to enter my school that was not offered the opportunity to buy a personal computer. Instead, my parents bought me a typewriter as a graduation present from high school. By the time I was a sophomore in college, my typewriter was obsolete and I was befriending every freshman I could find. Thankfully, companies like IBM, Apple and Microsoft decided to focus on turning the vision of affordable personal computing into a reality, instead of just trying to make better typewriters. Had the automakers been in charge, we would all still be tapping away at typewriters. They’d be really nice typewriters, with leather keys and computers sensors to tell you when to change the ink cartridge. They would of course have cup holders and probably DVD players. And you could get 0% financing to purchase it.

When you review the history of the automobile, you find out that electric cars have been around almost as long as those that run on gas. We also know that the technology to produce hybrid cars and engines that run on alternative fuels has existed for at least 30 years, and that countries like Japan have been able to achieve average fuel economies of at least 50 mpg. We also know that when pushed by government policy, the automakers are capable of meaningful improvements in the safety and environmental impact of their vehicles. What you conclude from researching the history of the car is that the technological development of the car stagnated not from a lack of ideas but from an obstinate oligopoly that chose to rest on one good idea instead of pushing the envelope and furthering the progress of mankind and their own profitability in the process. The irony is that the stubborn refusal of automakers to embrace new technologies will be a prime contributor to their demise.

Working 9 to 5

As I posted yesterday, emissions are not the only problem with cars. Because of our obsessive attachment to our cars, we cling to outdated modes of work. As Thomas Friedman argues persuasively in his recent book, The World is Flat, technological developments in personal computing, telecommunications and the internet have minimized the impact of distance. Yet, the flattening of the world stops around 20 miles from our home. We may be able to outsource nearly every critical job to India and share data instantaneously with anyone in the world, but every morning we still hop in our 19th Century vehicles and drive 10 miles to an office to perform tasks we can easily do at home: talk on the phone and work on the computer.

The traditional office environment is an anachronism whose existence depends on the car. Changes in the nature of work combined with the technological developments of the past quarter century have rendered the advantages of the centralized office moot. Prior to the internet revolution, offices gave ordinary workers tools to perform their jobs that they couldn’t obtain anywhere else. Plus, jobs used to be more compartmentalized and dependent on the work of others. Bringing employees together every day made sense. Now, the technology exists for any knowledge worker to work from nearly anywhere in the world. We have virtual private networks, videoconferencing, file sharing, instant messaging and so on. Tasks that used to require many workers and significant investments in equipment can be performed by individuals on a laptop and printer. Not only can people be productive without sitting in an office, I could easily make the case that it is cheaper to allow people to work anywhere but an office. And I’m not even counting the time and money saved by eliminating the daily commute for workers.

Since we know the technology exists to work from anywhere, what’s really needed is cultural innovation. Because, while telecommuting is supposedly offered by nearly every large employer, old school managers still cling to the notion that you are only working if someone else can see you working. Plus, you can’t really do your job well if you miss all of the important work conversations and networking that happen over the water cooler. The message is: if you want to get ahead, you better get in your car every morning and get your butt behind your desk, on the off chance that some important conversation will occur while you are walking to bathroom or that your boss decides to promote the first person he or she sees that day.

You want to see real innovation in the workplace? Try taking away people’s cars. If employees were unable to get to the office, companies would finally put all of that technology to work. Productivity and performance would actually be measured on outputs instead of the amount of hours worked each day. Time wasting meetings would finally disappear, with group interactions occurring ad hoc with only those who need to be involved. And if people needed to meet face-to-face, they could choose to do so – at a location that make sense for the group, not at an office that is conveniently located for one person - the owner. If people figured out how to get their jobs done without having to be in the same office, guess what would happen to expensive and time consuming business travel. When virtual meetings become the norm, most of those business trips end up looking like frivolous excursions.

Given the recent pandemic scares, companies across the world are planning for just this scenario. For most companies, the answer is telecommuting. Companies are finding that, through widespread use of the internet and outsourcing of data storage and management, essential job functions can still be performed if offices are closed in an emergency. This realization should accelerate the use of telecommuting as an option not just for standardized, data entry positions, but for all forms of work. Once managers realize that offices are obsolete, companies will stop organizing around physical locations, and instead organize around talent, products and job functions.

A New Beginning

The list of victims of the car’s stifling effect on innovation is long, and includes most areas of commerce and architecture. The reason we don’t see the missed opportunities for innovation is because most of us only know a world dominated by cars. If we are going imagine a world untethered by the car, we need to take ourselves out of our cars to begin to see this vision more clearly. What we will see is a stunning array of technologies that present us with an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent the way we work and live. We just need to stop listening to car addicted people who claim to be on the path of progress. They’ve been sitting behind tinted windows too long to realize they’re still stuck in the 19th Century.