{"id":1019,"date":"2007-07-27T08:18:03","date_gmt":"2007-07-27T08:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2007-07-27T08:18:03","modified_gmt":"2007-07-27T08:18:03","slug":"horseless_carriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/27\/horseless_carriages\/","title":{"rendered":"horseless carriages"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “horseless carriage” is a metaphor that’s often used<\/a> when talking about reading in a screen environment. Offhand, I don’t know where this metaphor started (McLuhan probably had a hand in it). The idea is basic but important: thinking about the automobile as a “horseless carriage” blinds one to what an automobile can do that a carriage can’t do. Metaphors carry historical deadweight.<\/p>\n

Last year the Noguchi Museum<\/a> had an exhibition on collaborations between Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller which featured video of Fuller’s Dymaxion car<\/a>. Through the wonder of Youtube, you can watch it now:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

One of Fuller’s main innovations with the Dymaxion car was to move the steering from the front – as is the case when you’re steering horses from a carriage – to the rear, which mechanically makes more sense. This video of the Dymaxion car is revelatory: we have so much trouble parallel parking because automotive engineers unthinkingly followed old models.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “horseless carriage” is a metaphor that’s often used when talking about reading in a screen environment. Offhand, I don’t know where this metaphor started (McLuhan probably had a hand in it). The idea is basic but important: thinking about the automobile as a “horseless carriage” blinds one to what an automobile can do that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258,535,831,1180],"tags":[2549],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carriage","category-dymaxion","category-horseless","category-metaphor","tag-horseless-carriage-metaphor-dymaxion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}