After looking at the new little Fiat 500, and BMWs recent Mini Cooper, I am struck that they look smaller than they really are. Put Sir Alec Issigonis' original BMC Mini beside a BMW Mini and the new Mini seems huge. But put the BMW Mini beside a Honda Fit, and the Mini seems fairly small again, even though in comparison it is really only stunningly inefficient, not small. The BMW Mini was designed to look small, while the Honda Fit was designed, like Sir Alec's Mini, to be vastly small; i.e., as small as possible outside and big as possible inside.
Now the Mini is a small car. Some engineer just chopped the legroom out of a small car with room. But it is a small car made to look like a Mini, or micro car. Same for the Fiat 500. Small, but made to look micro.
It seems the car companies have discovered something. People would rather seem to drive super efficient small cars, like the Smart, rather than actually drive the Smart.
I think this discovery is not going to stay limited to the car companies.
Me thinks that in the age of the reputed Bilderberger and Trilateral mandated demand destruction for USA (reputed 25% cut in consumption triggered with induced stagflation, plus eventual $6/US gallon low sulfur diesel in the states--bye-bye Toyota gasoline hybrids), and hence over time economic hard times for the whole world, that the idea, or image, of smallness and efficiency are about to triumph over actual smallness and efficiency.
Why?
pt. 2
Even as fully a quarter or a third of the American population grows impoverished, fully 2/3s or 3/4s will still be making ends meet, as was the brutal but actual and unromanticised fact of the Great Depression, and so the fortunate will NOT have to make the enormous sacrifices of outright hunger and privation that the unfortunates will be asked to make. The fortunates will be given the "privilege" of looking the other way and buying products that look more small and efficient than they actually will be.
Put another way, it seems the look of tiny-ness and efficiency are going to become, for the arriving belt tightening via hyper stagflation in the west and soon to follow depression in the Far East, what streamlining was for the Great Depression of the 1930s. Streamlining was an expression of faith-based technology. All kinds of aerospace advancements were quite dazzling at the time of the breadlines and declining abilities of fully one quarter of persons to afford the good, or even basic, things in life. Streamlining mundane products indicated a faith and a promise that, well, yes, people were starving and radical political parties were rising in popularity like a flood tide, as a disgruntled result, but, well, if we could just hang on awhile, science and technology were going to have us soar out of the nightmare of that old Great Depression in a streamlined society, so to speak.
Similarly, today, as a quarter or a third of persons living outside Richistan contend with the harsh realities of reputedly central bank induced hyperstagflation in the West and with likely ensuing deflation in places like China, there is a science of smallness--nanotechnology--ascending with impressive impact much as aerospace was ascendent in the 30s. Also similarly, there appears to be a quasi-religious belief in smallness as a virtue in and of itself. As awareness spreads of nanotechnology successes, it will likely acquire some cache of techno chic. It also seems highly likely that there will be a dovetailing of science of the small and belief in the small into a marketable aesthetic of the small. And just as streamline cars, fridges, toasters, etc., only had to look streamlined, not actually be streamlined, to assuage fears and appeal to hopes of those not directly in the jaws of the brutal Great Depression, Nanostyle (yes, you heard the term coined here first) will make products seem small and efficient and capable of contributing to our harrowing migration through belt tightening, preemptive wars and oil-coincident genocides, even though they really won't.
pt. 3
Mass media, reputdedly owned largely by the central bank centric status quo, has (regardless of one's take on who controls what and whether or not things happen out of everyone's control or via the control of a few) convinced the citizenry that consuming less is beautiful (i.e., its chic to comply with demand destruction policy precepts of the Bilders and Trilaterals) and can save the world from a distaster movie called global warming, even though the slowly, but inexorably accumulating nuissances called measurable facts of science (as opposed to the non parametric drivel of most "modelling" by algorithm) increasingly confirms that this global warming is caused largely by long term solar activity and only marginally by human driven emissions and that the disaster effects if any, will phase in over a very long period of time and will be, in the end, effectively, as natural as any other climate warming cycle in geologic history.
At the same time, the Anglo American oil oligopoly (big American oilcos plus those owned by the Crown of Britain) in a desperate fight to save its oligopoly from the spreading recognition of vast new oil reserves all over the planet, appears to be acting rather like DeBeers reputedly has in the diamond industry for the last century; that is, they are simultaneously using every means at their considerable disposal to grab control of all the sources of the oversupplied natural resource they can on the one hand to induce scarcity in an otherwise oversupplied resource, while on the other hand they engage the services of PR firms, media and politicians and their armies to tell an already frightened public that oil, like diamonds, is scarce, scarce, scarce, scarce, and absolutely essential to keep living as good as we have and to keep being as good to our loved ones as we have. But they leave out that contemporary exploration technologies are finding vast new supplies of oil frequently and that evidence that certain shallow, exploited oil fields are actualy regenerating rather than running out. And of course the oil oligopoly grapples also with the thorny problem of their being enough geothermal energy on every continent to completely suspend the use of oil or natural gas for anything but making plastic and fertilizer.
pt. 4
Now I ask you: when you tell a people their world is about to flood biblically from global warming (even though the chances of biblical flooding, or any other kind, from global warming are wildly improbable AND utterly manageable over the next two century time frame that they might even begin to manifest) and that the people themselves are THE cause of this biblical flooding, and for a chaser you tell them that the oil used to feed, cloth and transport them is a) causing the biblical flooding and b) suddenly drying up, well, what do you expect people to do but get religious. And when people get religious, it invariably impacts their buying choices (note: religious folks traditionally love denying themselves some things and over indulging in other things rife with religious symbolism) and the aesthetics that drive those buying choices.
I'm betting on the asethetics of smallness being the new faith based science style. Nanostyle. Not actual smallness and efficiency arrived at by rigorous design solving real problems of wasteful largeness and of solving problems which could never be solved before at the macro and micro scales (which nanotech can do), but the appearance of smallness...like the appearance of streamlining.
Make me a refrigerator that looks alot smaller and leaner than it actually is--one I can still cram full of as much food packaged in plastic packages that look smaller than they actually are. Don't stack potato chips in a small, efficient cylinder that keeps them from breaking. Keep them in an oversized, smashable bag, but use color and graphics to make the oversized bag look smaller and more efficient. Its a great way of paradoxing the buyer and paradoxing always enhances the post paradox receptiveness to the buy suggestion. Don't make cars truly smaller and more efficient; that would cost way too much. Use the existing small cars, reduce the rear leg room and make them appear smaller and cuter with aesthetics, so we can have our hope/faith that smallness will save us from the synthetic bogeymen our societies have created for us and overstimulated us all with, without really having to do with that much less.
pt. 5
Design me a "Chicken Little" that seems smaller and more frightened than it really is, at least until they corner all the new oil that electromagnetic earth tomography, or whatever they call it, has revealed in Venezuela, North Korea, Cambodia, Tibet/Nepal, off Cuba, central Asia's stans, across Africa, througout South America, in Antarctica, in the Arctic Ocean, in every Ocean, even deep in the earth's crust, far below where biomass could possibly have been the cause of its formation.
Design me a Chicken Little that is just slightly smaller than the old Chicken Little, but use color and graphics and form language to make it feel cute and small, so I can believe there is a way through the nightmare of consolidating control of natural resources by thinking/believing small and efficient will save me.
Give me a halleilujah!
I'm totally bummed.
January...
I'm totally bummed.
January 19, 2000 - Oil approximately $23.00 USD a barrel
November 24, 2007 - Oil approximately $94.00 USD a barrel
The "What Me Worry" kid a resident at 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue.
And yes the Original Mini was much larger inside then the new Mini while also being unbelievably smaller outside. The rest of your post is really too depressing to get my head around this Thanksgiving weekend, I will digest it over the next couple of days.
Cheers!
Sorry about that. Our good...
Sorry about that. Our good rituals are absolutely vital at a time like this. Please ignore my post if it prevents you from seeing the good in your world; that was not my intent. There is much good. But as your post makes clear, significant parts of the good can easily be dashed away by a few bad apples...for a time, anyway. We must never forget the Great Depression passed and so did two World Wars. But the honorable persons must survive before they can repair or redesign any of the havoc wrought. Happy holidays where ever you may be.
I'm afraid
that when I see one of our Mr Wilson's voluminous posts I usually go on to something else. I'm sure I've missed many an interesting thought and observation (as proven by those that I've penetrated) but I wonder if a brief outine of the contents, given at the end, perhaps, might entice the lazy or hurried DA reader to get on board.
Has this issue been discussed already ?
I would hate to be a wet blanket to one of our more dedicated posters. . .!
SDR
No need to apologize Mr. Wilson
you make some very valid points and your follow-up post is something I can get my head around quite readily. Yes, we have a great resilence in this country, but more importantly, the morons currently in power can't stay in power indefinitely, that is my hope anyway.
"OIl
in every Ocean, even deep in the earth's crust, far below where biomass could possibly have been the cause of its formation."
I beg your pardon ?
As for sea level rise, while it is no doubt a natural and cyclical phenomenon, since the last serious episode of sea level change (whenever that may have been), the numbers of humans living and working within the first 10 feet above sea level has grown by X % -- some very large number, wouldn't you say ? So, natural or not, if we are concerned for the welfare of individuals, corporations, or governments, we have to wonder where the people who occupy that first 10 feet will go, and how the loss of property will affect economies and individual fortune alike. . .
It is perfectly natural to wish away the cries of the Chicken Littles -- but is it rational and prudent to do so ? In asking that, I acknowledge my relative lack of education in many of the issues raised that contribute to the interesting scenarios posited -- but then I come across a statement such as the one quoted above and I wonder. . .
.
we really should stop agonising about design so much, its important but its really quite simple, BUY LESS STUFF! DRIVE LESS, FLY LESS. It helps solves a multitude of problems from debt to obesity to climate change to social isolation to corporate greed....
Its a bit like overweight people wringing the hands about the problem, eat less + do more.
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