A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next, 9/23/21 12:00 PM PDT
Channel: Mechanics' Institute
Date: 2021-09-29

Co-sponsored by Gray Area and Goethe-Institut



Author Tom Standage in conversation with Dr. Moira Gunn, Host of Tech Nation (NPR)Tom Standage’s fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted readers and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology—personal transportation—and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel—a device that didn’t catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention— Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in, from the geography of our cities to our experience of time to our notions of gender. Then, delving into the history of the automobile’s development, Standage explores the social resistance to cars and the upheaval that their widespread adoption required. Cars changed how the world was administered, laid out, and policed, how it looked, sounded, and smelled—and not always in the ways we might have preferred. Today, we find ourselves at a similar inflection point to when the world of motion shifted from the horse to the car. As in the 1890s, we know current mode of transportation is unsustainable, and the choices we make now about what is next for motion will shape society going forward. Social transformations brought about by the changing climate, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the increase in options for other modes of transportation, from ride-sharing to autonomous vehicles to electric scooters, might finally disrupt the car’s dominance in culture.