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In 1478, DaVinci invented the first self propelled car, even though nobody actually made one, it remained a sketch on paper, almost 300 years later in 1769, Cugnot built the first road vehicle in France as a tractor for the French army and it moved at a whopping 2.5 miles per hour; 20 years later Oliver Evans gets a patent for a steam-powered vehicle, in 1801, Trevithick, a brit, builds a steam carriage considered the first tramway locomotive designed to be used outside of the railroad. In 1807, Rivaz, a Swiss, invents an internal combustion engine running on a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and designs a car for the engine but no success. 1832, Anderson invents a crude electric carriage in Scotland, 1863 Jean-Joseph-Etienne builds the horseless carriage and his engine is finally efficient enough to burn fuel inside a piston chamber. in 1870, almost 400 after Davinci, Hock builds an internal combustion gas engine, in 1879 Baldwin files a patent for an automobile, and in 1885 Karl Benz builds the first true gas-powered automobile. I skipped a bunch of in betweens, not because they’re not important, but no matter how many people I name, the nameless people who lined the roads with bloody bodies in the pursuit of changing the world so we could enjoy the car we enjoy today are just that: nameless … and I can guarantee you that there are a lot more nameless people than the ones we named. Interestingly enough, Americans are the ones that focused on patenting.
Maybe a little more, 1896, the Duryea brothers start the first American car manufacturing company in Springfield, MA, in 1900 the steering wheel replaces the tiller, in 1913 Ford’s model T is mass produced at a rate of 146 cars per hour (up from 7.5 prior), in 1924 the radio is introduced, 1940 the Jeep is developed as the first 4×4 for the army, 1956 the Highway Act creates the most massive network of roads in the United states, safety and convenience features dot the landscape until 1995 when the GPS is introduced as something truly revolutionary for cars.
The problem is that it’s hard to see … but between 1920 and 1945, even as Ford ramped up their production, the actual number of cars on the road flattened … the Great Depression hit, and not until WWII did we see an initial down, with a steady uptick. Interestingly there was a bit of a downtick during the 1990’s when we hit an oil crisis.
Back to the real topic. Through history when we see technology introduced, no matter how amazing and how life-changing it eventually becomes, there is a long road to mass deployment, mass adoption and ubiquity. However, when the dreamers told the tale of the automobile, they saw streets lined with cars, heck, now we even see visions of the skies full of flying cars. Why? First because we think of things in models we understand; since the car is so ubiquitous and we all want to drive them (at least in the us), we see it as a natural thing that we would want to fly in them. Why not? Imagine the Freedom, imagine that we can control our destiny flying from point a to point b in hours and no longer be limited by the airlines charging randomly.
Quick side track
I have been waiting to go visit my family in Utah because Delta Airlines’ direct flight from PVR to SLC is so expensive, i’ve seen it as low as 200, and as high as 2000 this year, and it has always made me curious what it is that sets the price, and I’m quite convinced it’s an algorithm somewhere. No problem with that, we love algos. But here’s the funny part of this story. Check this out:
Now look at the actual reservation (by the way, if anyone needs a cheap seat from SLC to LAS on the 21st … I think they may have a no-show.
If I booked the exact same flight as a leg to Las Vegas, requiring me an additional flight, the price dropped to 259 including all the extra fees … the actual base fare was 144.00 compared to a base fare of 899.00!
So I called customer service and I said, can you just cancel the 2nd leg of my flight, and ill get off in Salt Lake City, and she said no, we can’t do that. Can you honor the same price and just give me the salt lake flight for the same amount? No sir, I cannot do that either, the system won’t let me — we both know it’s a computer with an over-ride that a supervisor can authorize. Ok, so if I just get off in Salt Lake what happens? No sir, you cannot. Oh yea? Is it illegal? How many times have you made me miss my continuing flight and you smiled at me while you made me wait? Well, Sir, it’s not illegal, but we do not recommend it. Hmmm, i wonder what the WildMonkey will do?
This is exactly why we want freedom from the airlines and control of our own lives! Ha Ha … Dramatic? Maybe, but Oh so real. I hope someone from Delta reads this and gets embarrassed enough to show the CEO.
Regardless of the technological breakthrough, there is a serious and painful path to ubiquity. When they put the radio in the car back in the 1920’s we could not have foreseen a real need for this, but now, my teen can’t get in without hooking up his bluetooth and firing up his Spotify playlist, which, by the way, he’s paying for! What the fudge!? Who pays for radio? Didn’t we already go through the pains of freeing the airwaves? And after all, what’s wrong with little marketing? Some of them are even fun! This demonstrates that the social psyche, the culture, the social conscience expands to accept a new reality. When I was young, we had a small tube radio that I used to listen to the Lone Ranger at night, our family was too poor for tv, and when we actually got so much money we bought one of these black and white wonders, you know? The get up at 6 am on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons, and the dream of mom letting us stay up late enough to hear the national anthem and the following high-pitched hum as the stations concluded the regular programming. This was our reality, for many of us. Today, reality is a world that is connected 24/7, words travel at the speed of fiber and spread all over the world. Yes! The information flows so much faster and wider, but so does the fodder, the noise, which is hard to tell what is reality from truth. Welcome to the Matrix.
With the signature of the Highway Act in 1956, Eisenhower not only put a bunch of inmates to work and connected the cities in a much broader way than the railroads, it literally paved the way for the cars to allow personal mobility. Freedom to hit the road, also the freedom to crash, road rage and use these heavy pieces of metal, fiber glass and plastic as projectiles. Everything comes with its dark side. With the roads in the US, the commerce accelerated, fleets of commercial cars hit the road and expanded industries. Literally it could not happen if the rubber didn’t meet the road. Hitting the pavement meant money, and it meant opportunity. Did it mean risk? Huge risk! Did everyone who planned to make their fortune in a car-related business succeed? Nope … scams? Abundant! Conspiracy Theories? … wait, wait … i gotta’ get this one out of me ‘cause I saw it on Twitter this morning … if Nixon’s conspiracy was called Water Gate? What do we call Elon’s Twitter conspiracy?
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Elongate! Sorry i just had to borrow it … but it gets better … who’s Elongate’s Deepthroat? Oh my this post just went x-rated (for those of you too young to remember, Deepthroat was the “leak” in the Watergate scandals) and it was poetic justice that DeepThroat was Felt! No seriously, DeepThroat’s last name was “Felt”. OMG I better stop
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But seriously, why am I bringing up all this nonsense and memorabilia? Because I hear the cries for freedom and control that will come from Web3. And because I also hear the cries of pain from those people who are now getting bloodied and mamed in the world of crypto, which hails the world of web3. What will be the infrastructures that drive ubiquity? What is the equivalent of the engine for web3? Blockchain? I mean it does take gas … ha ha Speaking of gas, then what about the gas stations, and the gas transports?
I wanted to write a sorta’ short, tongue-in-cheek article because I feel for those of us who have gotten bitten. Believe me, my son talked me into investing 50K in a bank of ETH mining GPU’s … which went so well, we were up to 300 dollars day, except the city power came and shut us down because we exceeded residential power levels! Ouch … now I have all these useless GPU’s that my teens can’t even use for gaming cause they’re too old. I want to build solar pods with wireless connectivity and water production in the walls for extra cooling (the tech exists!) and buy cheap desert land in the middle of oceans of sun to give away gas! Anyone wants to join me?
Let’s start paving the roads degens!
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