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highways
This page considers the automobile, bicycle and highways
as points of reference for understanding the internet.
It covers -
There
is a supplementary note on the auto
industry, highlighting general studies and works on
particular manufacturers.
introduction
Recurrent characterisation, in the US and elsewhere, of
the net as the "information superhighway" indicates
that highway networks represent both a potent symbol and
a metaphor for making sense of infrastructure and online
activity.
They are also networks that people in advanced economies
often take for granted, a far cry from the 1754 newspaper
advertisement that
However
incredible it may appear, this coach will actually arrive
in London four days after leaving Manchester.
James Flink's The Automobile Age (Cambridge: MIT
Press 1993), Ruth Brandon's Automobile: How The Car
Changed Life (London: Macmillan 2002) and The Automobile
Revolution: The Impact of an Industry (Chapel Hill:
Uni of North Carolina Press 1982) by James Laux &
Jean-Pierre Bardou are outstanding studies of the world
made by cars.
social history
There is another perspective in David Halberstam's superb
The Fifties (New York: Villard 1994), Glenn Yago's
The Decline of Transit: Urban Transportation in German
& US Cities, 1900-1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge
Uni Press 1984), Peter Ling's America & the Automobile:
Technology, Reform & Social Change (Manchester:
Manchester Uni Press 1989), Wolfgang Sachs' For Love
of the Automobile: Looking Back into the history of our
desires (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1992)
and Stephen Goddard's Getting There: The Epic Struggle
Between Road & Rail in the American Century (Chicago:
Uni of Chicago Press 1996).
David Kruger's The Electric Car & the Burden of
History (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press 2000) is
a cogent exploration of a technology that didn't last
the distance.
John Rae's The Road & Car in American Life
(Cambridge: MIT Press 1971) and The Automobile &
American Culture (Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press
1983) edited by David Lewis & Laurence Goldstein are
landmark studies. For the UK see in particular LJ Setright's
crusty Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car
(London: Granta 2003) and Peter Thorold's The Motoring
Age: The Automobile and Britain 1896-1939 (London:
Profile 2003). Grame Davison's Car Wars: How The Car
Won Our Hearts & Conquered Our Cities (Crows
Nest: Allen & Unwin 2004) is strongly recommended.
It is complemented by Paul Sutter's Driven Wild: How
the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness
Movement (Seattle: Uni of Washington Press 2002)
and Jane Kay's Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile
Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back (New
York: Crown 1997).
For the USSR see Cars for Comrades: The Life of the
Soviet Automobile (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2008)
by Lewis Siegelbaum. Volumes in the 'Road & American
Culture' series (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press) edited
by John Jakle are also suggestive. These include Fast
Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (1999),
The Motel in America (1996) and The Gas Station
in America (1994). Margaret Walsh's Making Connections:
The Long-Distance Bus Industry in the USA (Aldershot:
Ashgate 2000) is of value.
infrastructure and economy
In 2003 it was claimed that motor vehicles are responsible
for around 50% of global oil consumption, with manufacture
absorbing 47% of annual rubber production, 15% of steel
and 25% of glass - some 10% of GDP in rich countries but
only 0.6% of US stockmarket capitalisation and 1.6% of
that in the EU. Road construction and maintenance in some
states, notably Japan, was equally significant.
The 1998 paper
by Ishaq Nadiri & Theofanis Mamuneas on Contribution
of Highway Capital to Output & Productivity Growth
in the US is suggestive.
Development of US highway system since 1924 is described
here
and in works such as Tom Lewis' Divided Highways:
Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American
Life (New York: Viking 1997), Dan McNichol's The
Roads That Built America (New York: Barnes &
Noble Books 2003), Mark Rose's Interstate Express
Highway Politics 1941-1989 (Knoxville: Uni of Tennessee
Press 1990), Clay McShane's Down the Asphalt Path:
The Automobile and the American City (New York: Columbia
Uni Press 1997), Scott Bottles' Los Angeles and the
Automobile: The Making of the Modern City (Berkeley:
Uni of California Press 1987) and Bruce Seely's Building
the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers
(Philadelphia: Temple Uni Press 1987). Cant about autobahnen
is questioned in Dan Silverman's Hitler's Economy:
Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933-1936 (Cambridge:
Harvard Uni Press 1998).
James Rubenstein's Making and Selling Cars: Innovation
& Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2001) is of particular value.
Michele Hoyman's Power Steering: Global Automakers
& the Transformation of Rural Communities (Lawrence:
Uni Press of Kansas 1997) explores competition to host
car manufacturers and component suppliers, offering a
perspective on writings by Richard Florida and other 'lure
the creatives' (with decaf latte and opera or otherwise)
pundits.
the bicycle
In 2004 it is easy to forget that the bicycle initially
had greater social ramifications than the motor car, liberating
women and youth at a time when cars were reserved for
a privileged few.
Studies include Jim Fitzpatrick's The Bicycle and
the Bush: Man & Machine in Rural Australia (Melbourne:
Oxford Uni Press 1980) on Australia, David Herlihy's Bicycle:
The History (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2004), Pryor
Dodge's The Bicycle (Paris: Flammarion 1996),
Frederick Alderson's Bicycling: A History (New
York: Praeger 1972), Glen Norcliffe's Ride to Modernity:
The Bicycle in Canada, 1869-1900 (Toronto: Uni of
Toronto Press 2001), John Woodforde's The Story of
the Bicycle (London: Routledge 1980), Robert Smith's
A Social History of the Bicycle (New York: American
Heritage Press 1972) and Amir Esfehani's The Bicycle's
Long Way to China: The Appropriation of Cycling as a Foreign
Cultural Technique (1860-1940) here.
There is a characteristically insightful discussion in
Eugen Weber's France, Fin de Siecle (Cambridge:
Harvard Uni Press 1986).
Australia
As of 2000 the total length of roads open for general
traffic in Australia at June 2000 was 805,835 kilometres
(of which 324,723 was bitumen or concrete).The Australian
Bureau of Statistics reported
in 2001 that the Australian motor vehicle fleet (as of
1999) was around 12 million vehicles, excluding motor
cycles.
In 1921 there were around 99,270 registered motor vehicles
and 37,580 motorcycles, increasing to 562,271 cars, 258,025
commercial vehicles and 79,237 motorcycles in 1939. By
1947-48 there were almost one million registered vehicles,
excluding motorcycles. The estimated average was one vehicle
per 45 persons in 1921, rising to one vehicle per 11 persons
in 1930 and one vehicle per 7.8 persons in 1947-48. As
of 1999 the average had risen to one vehicle per 1.6 persons.
In 1947-48 cars comprised 61% of Australian vehicles,
with light commercial vehicles/trucks accounting for 35%.
By 1999 those figures had changed to 81% and 18% respectively.
For the Australian industry see Wheels and Deals:
The Automobile Industry in Twentieth Century Australia
(Aldershot: Ashgate 2001) by Robert Conlon & John
Perkins, Big Wheels and Little Wheels (Melbourne:
Lansdowne 1964) by Laurence Hartnett, Volkswagen in
Australia: The Forgotten Story (Heathmont: AF 2004)
by Rod & Lloyd Davies and Davison's Car Wars:
How The Car Won Our Hearts & Conquered Our Cities
(Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin 2004).
A perspective on the auto is provided by Cobb &
Co Heritage Trail: Bathurst to Bourke by Diane de
St Hilaire Simmonds, noting that at its peak the Cobb
& Co stage-coach company in Australia travelled 44,800
kilometres per week, with 30,000 horses.
imagination
There have been surprisingly few studies of the highway
and the car in film and the literary imagination, although
in considering the net it would be interesting to explore
images of the 'open road' and of cars as an embodiment
of independence, potency or merely consumer fetishism.
That examination might encompass
- the
ambivalence evident in works such as JG Ballard's Crash,
Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris and Stephen
King's Christine
- highways
as liberation and experience, from The Wind in the
Willows and the Grapes of Wrath to Thelma
& Louise and Easy Rider
- the
highway as an urban cancer or embodiment of modernity
and postmodernity, eg from Jane Jacobs' Death &
Life of American Cities to Reyner Banham's Los
Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Sean
O'Connell's The Car in British Society: Class, Gender
and Motoring, 1896-1939 (Manchester: Manchester
Uni Press 1998), Owen Gutfreund's Twentieth-Century
Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape
(New York: Oxford Uni Press 2004), Richard Whiting's
The View from Cowley: The Impact of Industrialization
upon Oxford, 1918-1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press
1983) or Baudrillard's Simulacra & Simulation
- highways
as an embodiment of national identity - eg mega-projects
such as Trans-Amazon Highway (the Brazilian version
of China's Three Gorges Dam) - and precursors of white
elephants such as Malaysia's Multimedia SuperCorridor
(MSC)
- and
as an excuse for the 'road novel', 'road movie' and
'road memoir' such as Robert Sullivan's Cross Country:
Fifteen Years and Ninety Thousand Miles on the Roads
and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, a Lot
of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac,
My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee
to Kill an Elephant (New York: Bloomsbury 2006),
Larry McMurtry's The Late Child (New York:
Simon & Schuster 1995), Jack London's The Road
(1907) and Jack Kerouac's On The Road (New
York: Viking 1957)
Academic
studies of particular genres include David Laderman's
Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie (Austin:
Uni of Texas Press 2002) and David Jeremiah's Representations
of British Motoring (Manchester: Manchester Uni Press
2007).
law of the road
As with other communications developments the evolution
of law regarding highways, automobiles and bicycles has
been evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
It has primarily concerned -
- regulation
of behaviour on the road, eg restrictions on speed and
driving while intoxicated
- regulation
of what/who gets onto the road, eg supervision of vehicle
manufacturers, restrictions on the carriage of dangerous
goods, licensing of drivers
- road
construction and maintenance, including compulsory purchase
for highway development and regimes restricting billboards
- corollaries
such as use of driver
licencing as a de facto national identity card
Perspectives are provided by Robert Caro's The Power
Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New
York: Random 1974), Nicholas Papayanis's Horse-Drawn
Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris: The Idea of Circulation and
the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State Uni Press 1996), Graham Hodges' Taxi! A Social
History of the New York City Cabdriver (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2007), Peter Norton's Fighting
Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City
(Cambridge: MIT Press 2008), Biju Mathew's Taxi! Class
and Capitalism in New York City (New York: New Press
2005) and Sally Clarke's Trust and Power: Consumers,
the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States
Automobile Market (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
2007).
Tim Blanning's The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815
(New York: Viking 2007) notes that improved roads and
hence vastly increased traffic in early modern Europe
had an unanticipated consequence - highwaymen - with the
18th century 'gentlemen of the road' becoming figures
of romance on the basis that improved roads provided them
with more people who could be required to 'stand and deliver'.
highways as a paradigm for the net
Glib characterisations about information super-highways
(or goat tracks) aside, are highways a useful paradigm
for understanding the net?
Proponents of the paradigm point to -
- the
differentiation between the infrastructure (concrete
and tar, fibre and switches) and the application layer
(the traffic - and rules for traffic - made possible
by that infrastructure)
- the
role of government in providing or licensing construction
and operation of that infrastructure
- the
autonomy enjoyed by users of the infrastructure and
the diversity of uses (from taking the family dog for
a picnic, to delivering a bride to the synagogue or
widgets to the factory or cash to the ATM)
- questions
about the meaningfulness of characterisations of 'community'
- can we usefully talk about a community of drivers
(and passengers) and a community of internet users
- the
interaction of civil and criminal law, including speed
limits, seatbelt provisions, vehicle certification,
restrictions on the carriage of dangerous goods and
punishment for drink driving or other offences
- the
significance of standards in shaping infrastructure
and patterns of use
- disagreement
about divides and the shape of access, with for example
rollout of infrastructure to locations where traffic
is unlikely to justify investment and questions about
economic exclusion
- highways
and the net as embodiments of national pride and anxiety
- disorders
such as road rage, web rage, drive by shootings and
the "great Australian ugliness" in the form
of billboards (or spam)
- punditry
about time, with for
example claims that the "average US citizen"
spends 70 minutes per day in a vehicle (somewhat less
than the time spent in front of a screen).
landscapes and architecture
Simon Henley's The Architecture of Parking (London:
Thames & Hudson 2008), Driving Germany: The Landscape
of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970 (New York: Berghahn
2007) by Thomas
Zeller and Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive
Age (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2008) by Brian Ladd.
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