We watched someone struggle to put a Graco stroller into the normally capacious trunk of a Toyota Camry. I remarked that cheap American (but manufactured in China) strollers are really expensive in the end because they force people to buy bigger cars. We actually know someone who traded her Honda Civic for a Volvo station wagon when she discovered her Graco did not fit in the Civic. (Graco even produces a stroller cobranded with Jeep!.)
Mark retorted that it was easier to engineer something big and dumb than to engineer something small. He further added it was lazy American engineering. Before you flame us, we mean that in a sad, embarrassed sort of way. We wish America produced better quality engineering. (Hell, we wish our nation produced something besides marketing!) Our nation should be able to do better.
Dumb-ass strollers lead to dumb-ass big American trucks used to transport strollers and their accompanying children. Well, big American asses also lead to big American trucks.
keywords: sociology, cars, strollers
links: Size Matters, Size Matters II
We can do better, but we have gotten lazy. Lazy engineering makes things bigger and dummer, even computer programs which have gotten completely out of hand. Memory is "cheap" and it is easier to just throw sloppy badly written code in to fix the problem on top of all the other stuff, rather than writing the efficient "elegant" code I learned to write. It is easier to be fat. I am actually talking about programs here, but the analogy applies to many things.
ReplyDeleteSomeday it will all catch up with us.