beautiful machines (was RE: why cars suck (was: car-free Europe))

Mr P.A. Van Heusden pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
Wed Sep 22 02:05:30 PDT 1999


On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:


> Carl Remick wrote:
>
> >My dim opinion of the LIRR notwithstanding, I agree with you here.
> >And to get really nostalgic about it (at the risk of giving J.
> >Heartfield apoplexy), I have to say I consider steam locomotives the
> >only really beautiful machines ever created.
>
> C'mon Carl. The iMac is beautiful, just to take an example of
> something I've got 6 feet away from me.

And why? Because it just works.

In the newspaper (yesterday's Independent) reports of a 1997 train crash in the UK, they go on and on about a train driver who sat with his feet up on the dashboard in his train. The reason this is a bad thing is that train drives are meant to drive their trains with their foot *continuously* on the 'dead man's pedal' - if they remove the foot, the train stops. This is not a new thing - train drivers were complaining about this in France in 1968. There's nothing in the nature of the machine which forces trains to be designed this way - it all emerges from the social relations of production of train-transport-miles.

Similarly, computers. I really like quite a lot about the Sun Unix workstation I work on. Unix is (to me) a creative working environment, the screen is big, and I've got a cool Pink Floyd background on my screen. However, if I work continously, my RSI really starts plaguing me. If people can recall, one of the important facts in the landmark court case which established RSI as a real occupational hazard in the UK was the fact that workers had been forced to speed up production on keyboards - the result being strain injuries. Again, the relation was not one between person and machine - it was the relation of production (the boss's demand for speed-ups) which led to RSI.

The 1950s Johnson-Forrest Tendency people were very good at documenting the continual struggle over the organisation of production in the workplace. Such a documentation plays a useful role in placing technology in its place - the tyrany that a worker feels emanating from the machine is merely the tyrany of the relations between the worker and the owner of the machine (or the owners of urban geography - in the case of the car).

Arguing about 'too many cars' or 'cars make us free' is really meaningless unless you get down to the relations which inform how we use cars, and why.

Peter P.S. Here's New Model Army in a pessimistic mood, just for fun:

227

She stares at the screen

At the little words of green

Tries to remember what to do next

There's a trace of frustration

That crosses her face

Searching for the keys she should press

And I would help her

If I only know how

But these things are a mystery to me too

And it seems that the corporate

Eyes they are watching

She fears for her job

And the moments are passing

I stare at her nametag

And think to myself

Both you and I, we never asked

For any of this

So let's take a walk

Up past the chemical works

Where the sky turns green at night

And we'll talk about

Bout getting away from here

Some difference kind of life

But even in the freshest mountain air

While the jet fighters practice overhead

And they're drilling these hills

For uranium deposits

And they'll bury the waste

For our children to inherit

And though this is all done

For our own benefit, I swear

We never asked for any of this

Well this golden age of communication

Means everyone talks at the same time

And liberty just means

Some freedom to exploit

Any weakness that you can find

Well turn off the TV just for a while

Let us whisper to each other instead

And we'll hope that the corporate ears

Do not listen

Unless we find ourselves committing

Some kind of treason

And filed in the tapes

Without rhyme, without reason

While they tell us that it's all

For our own protection, I swear

We never asked for any of this... -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx



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