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Omnirizon · #**258** December 18th, 2008, 02:33 AM

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Originally Posted by chrispedersen

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Originally Posted by Omnirizon

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Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Huh, where did they get their energy from?
Even now batteries can't compete with gas. And a battery that is recharged often will get worse.
Back then they didn't even have electric light everywhere afaik.

I think it's mostly due to practical reason that oil was adapted. Slow cars with very limited range vs. fast cars with good range.

this is what the oil and auto want you to believe. although, it is actually very humanly natural to think in terms of technological determinism.

simply google "early electric cars" or better yet, if you have a university proxy to journal archives like JSTOR, you can read about the history of the car. further, if you have a university library with archived magazines from the late 19th century, you can see the trajectory of development of the car in the magazines and see the kind of propaganda adds ran by oil and auto. if you want to look up the work of Dan Lord, he is compiling and writing on all these things.

there is no practical reason to adopt oil, it was done simply for capitalistic motives. I'm not even so sure speed and range were practical benefits of oil at the time. they are today only due to the amount of investment put in this techonology. But even if it was, that may be why there was so much influence to create sprawling cities with suburbs and no mass trans or rail; this was needed to justify the rational for using oil.

also, if you read on the history of the car, you will see that suitable batteries for it had been developed a century earlier. if we had stuck with battery technology, rather than switching to internal combustion, then battery and electric engine technology would far surpass the alternatives now.

electricity and most of its production methods are too liquid. oil is something that can be easily controlled.

Wow. Conspiracy AND future telling.

I'll restrain myself to answering just a couple of points:

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there is no practical reason to adopt oil, it was done simply for capitalistic motives

I would argue that adoption for capitalist reasons, by definition is the ultimate in adoption for practical reasons.

Eg., in the absense of govt or other forces, each person chose the best technology for themselves.

Of course, I suppose we *could* have put an incentive system in place for people to keep on using horse and buggies.

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if we had stuck with battery technology, rather than switching to internal combustion, then battery and electric engine technology would far surpass the alternatives now

Well, since technological development is apparently only a matter of wishful thinking - please tell me when fusion warp drives will be invented.

Conspiracy nuts to the contrary - people that develop technology (you know, those nasty capitalists) choose the one that seems to have the best possiblity for success - eg., making money.

The general rule of thumb in VC circles is that something has to be *roughly* 10 times better than an entrenched technology to be worth the risk.

your naivety is cute.

i'm sure nations suffering under things like Structural Adjustment Policy know all about capitalism and its practicality. they are also intimately familiar with its "best" choices of technology.

PS its not a conspiracy theory because it lacks any conspirators. Its a structure and systems theory that details how systems breed certain results.