From The Street...
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Reckoning...
Financial Day of Reckoning.
I’m a great fan of The Daily Reckoning(TDR) a site with a daily column of commentary on financial and economic doings. Two of the principals (William Bonner and Addison Wiggin) have written a book that has become (cliche alert) an instant best seller. (Barnes and Noble, Amazon). "Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of The 21st Century" (John Wiley & Sons New York, London),
They calmly analyze the bubbles of the tech stocks, home prices, credit expansion, more – putting it into a historical perspective that covers the financial doings of the world since paper money started.
This book is so good, you want to clip parts out and send to Colleagues and yell “YES, YES!!” like the always exuberant Mogumbo Guru, a weekly contributor to TDR.
I’ve always liked “contrarians”, especially when they are show to be right. The first chapters take apart George Gilder, in a nice way, and all the tech hyperbole he has generated. But, they rightly quote him : “I don’t do price…” .
By ignoring the basics (Yes, Virginia, There Still Are The Basics..) on Why People Do Stuff, and the “universalism” that folks always operate in their own best interest, and take actions based on The Heart, not Reason – Gilder lost a lot of his own money, and much more of Other People’s Money.
Go Buy This One
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Investing in China
What's The Best Way To Buy Into This Expanding China Opportunity?
A Colleague in Beijing says: "Chinese (middle class – 10% - 120 million!) are investing in cars and real estate....Invest in paint companies – cars get banged up, walls need covering..."
This from The Daily Reckoning earlier this week.
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The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Pao Mo! Pao Mo! Now that we know the real way to say 'bubble' in Chinese, here's a way for you to get in on it before it pops.
THE NEXT EMPIRE
By James Boxley Cooke
Everyone in the West has long talked about China in terms of its massive potential. But the future is now.
Many different elements - as you'll soon see - are combining forces. And China is beginning to realize its potential as a world economic superpower. Let's take a closer look at some promising developments in China over the past several years...
We've seen diplomatic breakthroughs, such as the U.S. designation of China as a "most favored nation," and its entry into the World Trade Organization. And just as importantly, we've seen Hong Kong's growing free-market influence on the motley politics driving the mainland economy. We've seen small businesses springing up from the Chinese countryside like mushrooms. In fact, we've seen every indicator that the people of China, including its huge middle class, are ready for a full-scale economic revolution.
China is not only the world's most populous nation, with over 1.3 billion citizens; it's also Asia's fastest-growing major economy. And has been for over a decade. Even with the current global economic slowdown, China is still likely to grow at more than 7% a year. That's a huge number for an economy this size. And it represents huge potential profits for us as investors.
I think the potential for the newly capitalistic Chinese economy is absolutely enormous. And while there are certainly political risks to keep less intrepid souls at bay, even a small investment in this region has the potential to make a big impact on our portfolios in the months and years ahead.
Take, for example, the thoughts of legendary hedge-fund manager [and friend of the Daily Reckoning] Jim Rogers, who enthused last year that no country's economic prospects excite him more than China's. In a Barron's interview, Rogers said, "The 21st century is the century of China... Everybody should teach their children and grandchildren Chinese.
"There is no question China is going to dominate all of Asia," Rogers added. "...and the whole world, eventually."
Strong words. But I think he's right. As I've said often, the development of China may well be the single-biggest investment story of the decade ahead. I suggest investing now, rather than trying to play catch-up later.
One vehicle we recommend is the closed-end Templeton Dragon Fund, managed by Mark Mobius. It's traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and gives us broad diversification inside China with the best emerging-market manager in the business.
As Oxford Club advisory panelist Lynn Carpenter writes, "One of the nice things about a closed-end fund is that - unlike a regular mutual fund - the assets under management don't fluctuate daily depending on contributions or withdrawals. Since the assets are stable, the manager of the fund can invest the assets for the long-term, without having to worry about redemptions."
That's key. We want Mobius putting money to work when he sees opportunities, not when retail investors decide to send him cash. The same is true on the sell side. We don't want him pulling the trigger just to meet shareholder redemptions.
Yet for all its potential, many investors still blanch when it comes to investing in this part of the world, noting that China is still a communist nation with a notoriously corrupt bureaucracy and only a gradually evolving rule of law. Are there enough positives to justify risking his capital in this part of the world?
Yes, indeed.
Sure, China is an area fraught with risks. It's no place for an investor for whom preservation of capital is paramount. But for more aggressive investors, it is a potential bonanza.
Let me start with the basics. In 2001, China grew at more than seven times the rate of the U.S. economy, despite the fact that the country's population is more than five times as large. Yet the vast majority of U.S. investors remain oblivious to the investment implications, even though the economic story is front-page news.
According to Andy Xie, a leading economist at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, "China's rise as a manufacturing base is going to have the same kind of impact on the world that the industrialization of the U.S. had, perhaps even bigger."
In fact, China is already the world's fourth-largest industrial base, behind only the U.S., Germany and Japan.
Already China makes:
* More than 50% of the cameras sold world-wide
* More than 35% of the televisions sold world-wide
* More than 30% of the air conditioners sold world-wide
* More than 25% of the washing machines sold world-wide
* More than 22% of the refrigerators sold world-wide
These numbers allow you to see the enormous impact that China is already having. But that impact is only just beginning. China's entry into the World Trade Organization is accelerating these economic trends at light speed.
Why? World Trade Organization membership cuts production costs, forces down tariffs, and removes obstacles to selling overseas. That, in turn, is drawing record direct investment in China.
Over $600 billion has been invested over the past two decades. And while individual investors and brokers are still asleep at the wheel, Fortune 500 companies are falling over themselves to take advantage of what's happening in the world's most populous country. For instance:
* GM purchased more than $1 billion in spare parts from China in the last few years and plans to increase that figure dramatically in the near future.
* Ford announced recently that it plans to boost its purchases of auto parts in China to as much as $1 billion annually starting this year (2003).
* General Electric expects purchases from China - both parts and finished goods - to hit $5 billion annually in the next three years.
* Wal-Mart concedes that more than $10 billion in Chinese- made goods are sold in its stores every year.
* Motorola says its total investment in China will hit a record $50 billion this year.
As you can see, the biggest investors in the U.S. - the Fortune 500 - are already plowing money into China.
With the exception of Hong Kong, however, markets inside China are too wild, unregulated and risky for us to gamble our capital there directly. For these reasons, the best 'safe' investment vehicle for our members remains the Templeton Dragon Fund.
The fund is broadly diversified between Hong Kong, Taiwan and China and, as I mentioned before, managed by the world's leading emerging market manager, Mark Mobius. In my view, the Templeton Dragon Fund is the safest, most-liquid way to obtain a pure play on the growth of China.
I remember our Club's Investment Director, Alexander Green, speaking at an investment conference at which he called China perhaps the single-biggest investment opportunity of the decade ahead. At once, a hand in the audience shot up. "Everyone comes back from China awestruck about the growth that's occurring there. But, in my opinion, China will never become a real investment opportunity until it quits relying on exports and starts developing its own domestic market."
Tell that to General Motors, I say.
For the year ended December 2002, GM reported that it sold over 264,000 vehicles in China, a 325% surge over 2001. And its goal is to have launched at least four new models in the world's fastest-growing auto market by the time this year is through.
"Growth potential remains enormous in China," said Phil Murtaugh, chairman of GM China. "We will respond with an unprecedented series of product launches and continue to seek additional opportunities."
(Incidentally, industry experts estimate that GM's profit margins are at least twice as high on cars it makes in China as on similar models made in the U.S.)
For years investors have talked about the enormous potential of China's gargantuan market. But, in the end, it always seemed to boil down to potential and little else.
There's a good reason for this. China has a well-deserved reputation as a fickle and ornery place for foreigners to do business. China's enigmatic legal system has only recently begun to honor property rights. Chinese entrepreneurs have often distinguished themselves primarily by aggressively pirating Western products like software, compact discs and cell phones. And foreigners have often tripped themselves up by overpaying for licenses, industrial land and office space.
But things are changing, rapidly and for the better. Just a year after China joined the World Trade Organization, and two decades after it began allowing foreign companies to invest locally, multinationals are quickly capitalizing on China's fabled market.
Chinese consumers - in droves - are now buying products from both domestic and foreign manufacturers. As the NY Times reported: "Already, the Chinese buy more cell phones than consumers anywhere else. They buy more film than the Japanese. They now buy as many vehicles as the Germans."
* For companies like Siemens and Motorola, China has become the single-most important market for mobile phone handsets and other equipment, accounting for billions of dollars in annual revenue.
* Japan's Toshiba now says it sells two-thirds of what it makes in its 34 China-based operations to the Chinese. Local sales were more than $2.5 billion last year.
* McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken have 700 China-based restaurants between them and open scores of additional stores each year.
* Eastman Kodak controls an estimated 63% of the domestic market in China for rolled film.
* Even Starbucks has found plenty of urban tea drinkers ready to spend $2.50 for a latte.
Yes, foreign companies are doing very well in China. But, for most of them, it's still a small percentage of their total sales and profits. And the Chinese are too smart to let foreign companies rake in all the dough. There is tremendous opportunity for local Chinese companies as well.
And American entrepreneurs are rapidly moving in. The Wall Street Journal confirms it. As Leslie Chang recently reported: "Last year China became the biggest recipient of foreign investment, for the first time surpassing the U.S. Foreign investment jumped almost 13% in 2002 to $52.74 billion. Even SARS, of which more than 60% of all reported cases worldwide appeared in mainland China, so far appears not to have dented the country's essential appeal: cheap labor, improving technology, and a fast-growing consumer pool."
In the future there will come a day when investors everywhere wake up and recognize China as "the opportunity of a lifetime." Dozens of mutual funds will spring up, offering myriad ways to capitalize on growth in China. Stockbrokers will call their clients and pitch their new China products with enthusiasm. "Business Week" and "Fortune" will run cover stories about the phenomenal growth in Chinese capital markets. Even your friends and colleagues will start telling you about the unprecedented investment opportunity they see in this nation of one and a quarter billion.
And that, my friends, is when we'll be getting out.
Sincerely,
James Boxley Cooke, for The Daily Reckoning
Editor's note: James Boxley Cooke is a former executive with T. Rowe Price, one of the oldest and most respected names in mutual fund management, with over $200 billion in assets under management. He is currently the Chairman of the Oxford Club.
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Tuesday, September 23, 2003
World's Fastest Growing Economy?
From The Daily Reckoning
===================
Bill Bonner, back in Paris...
*** Guess which country has the fastest-growing economy in
the G7? Japan! GDP grew 4% in the 3rd quarter in the land
of the raw fish eaters. And now Bloomberg tells us that
the Japanese - who are the world's biggest holders of U.S.
Treasury bonds - are losing interest in dollar assets. Oh
là là... What if they decide they don't need so many
Treasuries, after all?
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Guns
I don't own a real gun. I have an unreliable BB gun that is used unsuccessfully to chase away squirrels. But I believe in most of what the NRA says about gun usage. "Citizens" owning guns helps keep things civilized.
Here is an article by Pat Buchanan
Excerpt:
====================
In 1995, Gary Kleck published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology of Northwestern Law School his now-famous paper, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun.” Among its unchallenged assertions:
Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals 2.5 million times a year or about 6,850 times every day.
Of these 2.5 million self-defense uses of guns, more than 200,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse. Often, a Saturday Night Special is a girl’s best friend.
11 out of every 12 times citizens use their guns in self-defense, they merely brandish them or fire a warning shot.
When citizens do fire, they shoot and kill twice as many criminals as do cops every year. But, while 2 percent of civilian shootings are of people mistaken for criminals, that is true of 11 percent of police shootings.
Publicized by the Gun Owners of America, these facts have been confirmed by scholar John Lott who has just published a book with Indiana Jones in mind: The Bias Against Guns . Its subtitle: “Why Almost Everything You’ve Heard about Gun Control is Wrong.”
Friday, September 19, 2003
Victor David Hanson on the French...
(From his column today)
Hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson091903.asp
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Yet sophistication is not morality. Neither is nihilism. More people, remember, fried in France this August while its social utopians snoozed at the beach than all those lost in Kabul and Baghdad together. I think an American pilot who flew over the peaks of Afghanistan or a Marine colonel now patrolling in Iraq was far more likely to ensure that his aged mother back home lives under humane conditions than was a Frenchman this summer on his month-long vacation on the Mediterranean coast. So remember, this August Americans lost 100 brave soldiers fighting selflessly for the liberty of others while thousands of Frenchmen perished through their children’s neglect and self-absorption.
Feynman's Nanotech vision...in 1959
The promise of nanotechnology has been debated for years. The "popularizer" of several years ago, Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation by K. Eric Drexler, Wiley 1992, became the technical reference to all the good things that could happen. Lotsa reasons why they haven't happened yet. But in semiconductors, they are doing many things just like nanotechnology; and Gilder Himself sees this as a Next Big Thing.
Richard Feynman was a professor of Physics at Stanford and his classic Physics Course Notes have remained the basis for educating many/most of the people who went on to lead the semiconductor industry, and other "high tech", Silicon Valley endeavors. One fictional view of how this might all get out of hand is told in the novel "Prey" by Michael Crichton (Jurrassic Park, ER, many other credits).
Here is a link to a 1959 talk on Doing Things Smaller - "There's plenty of room at the bottom..." is the theme.
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
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There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom
An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics
by Richard P. Feynman
This transcript of the classic talk that Richard Feynman gave on December 29th 1959 at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) was first published in the February 1960 issue of Caltech's Engineering and Science, which owns the copyright. It has been made available on the web at http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html with their kind permission.
For an account of the talk and how people reacted to it, see chapter 4 of Nano! by Ed Regis, Little/Brown 1995. An excellent technical introduction to nanotechnology is Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation by K. Eric Drexler, Wiley 1992.
=======================
I imagine experimental physicists must often look with envy at men like Kamerlingh Onnes, who discovered a field like low temperature, which seems to be bottomless and in which one can go down and down. Such a man is then a leader and has some temporary monopoly in a scientific adventure. Percy Bridgman, in designing a way to obtain higher pressures, opened up another new field and was able to move into it and to lead us all along. The development of ever higher vacuum was a continuing development of the same kind.
I would like to describe a field, in which little has been done, but in which an enormous amount can be done in principle. This field is not quite the same as the others in that it will not tell us much of fundamental physics (in the sense of, ``What are the strange particles?'') but it is more like solid-state physics in the sense that it might tell us much of great interest about the strange phenomena that occur in complex situations. Furthermore, a point that is most important is that it would have an enormous number of technical applications.
What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale.
As soon as I mention this, people tell me about miniaturization, and how far it has progressed today. They tell me about electric motors that are the size of the nail on your small finger. And there is a device on the market, they tell me, by which you can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. But that's nothing; that's the most primitive, halting step in the direction I intend to discuss. It is a staggeringly small world that is below. In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction.
Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?
Let's see what would be involved. The head of a pin is a sixteenth of an inch across. If you magnify it by 25,000 diameters, the area of the head of the pin is then equal to the area of all the pages of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Therefore, all it is necessary to do is to reduce in size all the writing in the Encyclopaedia by 25,000 times. Is that possible? The resolving power of the eye is about 1/120 of an inch---that is roughly the diameter of one of the little dots on the fine half-tone reproductions in the Encyclopaedia. This, when you demagnify it by 25,000 times, is still 80 angstroms in diameter---32 atoms across, in an ordinary metal. In other words, one of those dots still would contain in its area 1,000 atoms. So, each dot can easily be adjusted in size as required by the photoengraving, and there is no question that there is enough room on the head of a pin to put all of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Furthermore, it can be read if it is so written. Let's imagine that it is written in raised letters of metal; that is, where the black is in the Encyclopedia, we have raised letters of metal that are actually 1/25,000 of their ordinary size. How would we read it?
If we had something written in such a way, we could read it using techniques in common use today. (They will undoubtedly find a better way when we do actually have it written, but to make my point conservatively I shall just take techniques we know today.) We would press the metal into a plastic material and make a mold of it, then peel the plastic off very carefully, evaporate silica into the plastic to get a very thin film, then shadow it by evaporating gold at an angle against the silica so that all the little letters will appear clearly, dissolve the plastic away from the silica film, and then look through it with an electron microscope!
There is no question that if the thing were reduced by 25,000 times in the form of raised letters on the pin, it would be easy for us to read it today. Furthermore; there is no question that we would find it easy to make copies of the master; we would just need to press the same metal plate again into plastic and we would have another copy.
How do we write small?
The next question is: How do we write it? We have no standard technique to do this now. But let me argue that it is not as difficult as it first appears to be. We can reverse the lenses of the electron microscope in order to demagnify as well as magnify. A source of ions, sent through the microscope lenses in reverse, could be focused to a very small spot. We could write with that spot like we write in a TV cathode ray oscilloscope, by going across in lines, and having an adjustment which determines the amount of material which is going to be deposited as we scan in lines.
This method might be very slow because of space charge limitations. There will be more rapid methods. We could first make, perhaps by some photo process, a screen which has holes in it in the form of the letters. Then we would strike an arc behind the holes and draw metallic ions through the holes; then we could again use our system of lenses and make a small image in the form of ions, which would deposit the metal on the pin.
A simpler way might be this (though I am not sure it would work): We take light and, through an optical microscope running backwards, we focus it onto a very small photoelectric screen. Then electrons come away from the screen where the light is shining. These electrons are focused down in size by the electron microscope lenses to impinge directly upon the surface of the metal. Will such a beam etch away the metal if it is run long enough? I don't know. If it doesn't work for a metal surface, it must be possible to find some surface with which to coat the original pin so that, where the electrons bombard, a change is made which we could recognize later.
There is no intensity problem in these devices---not what you are used to in magnification, where you have to take a few electrons and spread them over a bigger and bigger screen; it is just the opposite. The light which we get from a page is concentrated onto a very small area so it is very intense. The few electrons which come from the photoelectric screen are demagnified down to a very tiny area so that, again, they are very intense. I don't know why this hasn't been done yet!
That's the Encyclopaedia Brittanica on the head of a pin, but let's consider all the books in the world. The Library of Congress has approximately 9 million volumes; the British Museum Library has 5 million volumes; there are also 5 million volumes in the National Library in France. Undoubtedly there are duplications, so let us say that there are some 24 million volumes of interest in the world.
What would happen if I print all this down at the scale we have been discussing? How much space would it take? It would take, of course, the area of about a million pinheads because, instead of there being just the 24 volumes of the Encyclopaedia, there are 24 million volumes. The million pinheads can be put in a square of a thousand pins on a side, or an area of about 3 square yards. That is to say, the silica replica with the paper-thin backing of plastic, with which we have made the copies, with all this information, is on an area of approximately the size of 35 pages of the Encyclopaedia. That is about half as many pages as there are in this magazine. All of the information which all of mankind has every recorded in books can be carried around in a pamphlet in your hand---and not written in code, but a simple reproduction of the original pictures, engravings, and everything else on a small scale without loss of resolution.
What would our librarian at Caltech say, as she runs all over from one building to another, if I tell her that, ten years from now, all of the information that she is struggling to keep track of--- 120,000 volumes, stacked from the floor to the ceiling, drawers full of cards, storage rooms full of the older books---can be kept on just one library card! When the University of Brazil, for example, finds that their library is burned, we can send them a copy of every book in our library by striking off a copy from the master plate in a few hours and mailing it in an envelope no bigger or heavier than any other ordinary air mail letter.
Now, the name of this talk is ``There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom''---not just ``There is Room at the Bottom.'' What I have demonstrated is that there is room---that you can decrease the size of things in a practical way. I now want to show that there is plenty of room. I will not now discuss how we are going to do it, but only what is possible in principle---in other words, what is possible according to the laws of physics. I am not inventing anti-gravity, which is possible someday only if the laws are not what we think. I am telling you what could be done if the laws are what we think; we are not doing it simply because we haven't yet gotten around to it.
Information on a small scale
Suppose that, instead of trying to reproduce the pictures and all the information directly in its present form, we write only the information content in a code of dots and dashes, or something like that, to represent the various letters. Each letter represents six or seven ``bits'' of information; that is, you need only about six or seven dots or dashes for each letter. Now, instead of writing everything, as I did before, on the surface of the head of a pin, I am going to use the interior of the material as well.
Let us represent a dot by a small spot of one metal, the next dash, by an adjacent spot of another metal, and so on. Suppose, to be conservative, that a bit of information is going to require a little cube of atoms 5 times 5 times 5---that is 125 atoms. Perhaps we need a hundred and some odd atoms to make sure that the information is not lost through diffusion, or through some other process.
I have estimated how many letters there are in the Encyclopaedia, and I have assumed that each of my 24 million books is as big as an Encyclopaedia volume, and have calculated, then, how many bits of information there are (10^15). For each bit I allow 100 atoms. And it turns out that all of the information that man has carefully accumulated in all the books in the world can be written in this form in a cube of material one two-hundredth of an inch wide--- which is the barest piece of dust that can be made out by the human eye. So there is plenty of room at the bottom! Don't tell me about microfilm!
This fact---that enormous amounts of information can be carried in an exceedingly small space---is, of course, well known to the biologists, and resolves the mystery which existed before we understood all this clearly, of how it could be that, in the tiniest cell, all of the information for the organization of a complex creature such as ourselves can be stored. All this information---whether we have brown eyes, or whether we think at all, or that in the embryo the jawbone should first develop with a little hole in the side so that later a nerve can grow through it---all this information is contained in a very tiny fraction of the cell in the form of long-chain DNA molecules in which approximately 50 atoms are used for one bit of information about the cell.
Better electron microscopes
If I have written in a code, with 5 times 5 times 5 atoms to a bit, the question is: How could I read it today? The electron microscope is not quite good enough, with the greatest care and effort, it can only resolve about 10 angstroms. I would like to try and impress upon you while I am talking about all of these things on a small scale, the importance of improving the electron microscope by a hundred times. It is not impossible; it is not against the laws of diffraction of the electron. The wave length of the electron in such a microscope is only 1/20 of an angstrom. So it should be possible to see the individual atoms. What good would it be to see individual atoms distinctly?
We have friends in other fields---in biology, for instance. We physicists often look at them and say, ``You know the reason you fellows are making so little progress?'' (Actually I don't know any field where they are making more rapid progress than they are in biology today.) ``You should use more mathematics, like we do.'' They could answer us---but they're polite, so I'll answer for them: ``What you should do in order for us to make more rapid progress is to make the electron microscope 100 times better.''
What are the most central and fundamental problems of biology today? They are questions like: What is the sequence of bases in the DNA? What happens when you have a mutation? How is the base order in the DNA connected to the order of amino acids in the protein? What is the structure of the RNA; is it single-chain or double-chain, and how is it related in its order of bases to the DNA? What is the organization of the microsomes? How are proteins synthesized? Where does the RNA go? How does it sit? Where do the proteins sit? Where do the amino acids go in? In photosynthesis, where is the chlorophyll; how is it arranged; where are the carotenoids involved in this thing? What is the system of the conversion of light into chemical energy?
It is very easy to answer many of these fundamental biological questions; you just look at the thing! You will see the order of bases in the chain; you will see the structure of the microsome. Unfortunately, the present microscope sees at a scale which is just a bit too crude. Make the microscope one hundred times more powerful, and many problems of biology would be made very much easier. I exaggerate, of course, but the biologists would surely be very thankful to you---and they would prefer that to the criticism that they should use more mathematics.
The theory of chemical processes today is based on theoretical physics. In this sense, physics supplies the foundation of chemistry. But chemistry also has analysis. If you have a strange substance and you want to know what it is, you go through a long and complicated process of chemical analysis. You can analyze almost anything today, so I am a little late with my idea. But if the physicists wanted to, they could also dig under the chemists in the problem of chemical analysis. It would be very easy to make an analysis of any complicated chemical substance; all one would have to do would be to look at it and see where the atoms are. The only trouble is that the electron microscope is one hundred times too poor. (Later, I would like to ask the question: Can the physicists do something about the third problem of chemistry---namely, synthesis? Is there a physical way to synthesize any chemical substance?
The reason the electron microscope is so poor is that the f- value of the lenses is only 1 part to 1,000; you don't have a big enough numerical aperture. And I know that there are theorems which prove that it is impossible, with axially symmetrical stationary field lenses, to produce an f-value any bigger than so and so; and therefore the resolving power at the present time is at its theoretical maximum. But in every theorem there are assumptions. Why must the field be symmetrical? I put this out as a challenge: Is there no way to make the electron microscope more powerful?
The marvelous biological system
The biological example of writing information on a small scale has inspired me to think of something that should be possible. Biology is not simply writing information; it is doing something about it. A biological system can be exceedingly small. Many of the cells are very tiny, but they are very active; they manufacture various substances; they walk around; they wiggle; and they do all kinds of marvelous things---all on a very small scale. Also, they store information. Consider the possibility that we too can make a thing very small which does what we want---that we can manufacture an object that maneuvers at that level!
There may even be an economic point to this business of making things very small. Let me remind you of some of the problems of computing machines. In computers we have to store an enormous amount of information. The kind of writing that I was mentioning before, in which I had everything down as a distribution of metal, is permanent. Much more interesting to a computer is a way of writing, erasing, and writing something else. (This is usually because we don't want to waste the material on which we have just written. Yet if we could write it in a very small space, it wouldn't make any difference; it could just be thrown away after it was read. It doesn't cost very much for the material).
Miniaturizing the computer
I don't know how to do this on a small scale in a practical way, but I do know that computing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can't we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements---and by little, I mean little . For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across. Everybody who has analyzed the logical theory of computers has come to the conclusion that the possibilities of computers are very interesting---if they could be made to be more complicated by several orders of magnitude. If they had millions of times as many elements, they could make judgments. They would have time to calculate what is the best way to make the calculation that they are about to make. They could select the method of analysis which, from their experience, is better than the one that we would give to them. And in many other ways, they would have new qualitative features.
If I look at your face I immediately recognize that I have seen it before. (Actually, my friends will say I have chosen an unfortunate example here for the subject of this illustration. At least I recognize that it is a man and not an apple .) Yet there is no machine which, with that speed, can take a picture of a face and say even that it is a man; and much less that it is the same man that you showed it before---unless it is exactly the same picture. If the face is changed; if I am closer to the face; if I am further from the face; if the light changes---I recognize it anyway. Now, this little computer I carry in my head is easily able to do that. The computers that we build are not able to do that. The number of elements in this bone box of mine are enormously greater than the number of elements in our ``wonderful'' computers. But our mechanical computers are too big; the elements in this box are microscopic. I want to make some that are sub microscopic.
If we wanted to make a computer that had all these marvelous extra qualitative abilities, we would have to make it, perhaps, the size of the Pentagon. This has several disadvantages. First, it requires too much material; there may not be enough germanium in the world for all the transistors which would have to be put into this enormous thing. There is also the problem of heat generation and power consumption; TVA would be needed to run the computer. But an even more practical difficulty is that the computer would be limited to a certain speed. Because of its large size, there is finite time required to get the information from one place to another. The information cannot go any faster than the speed of light---so, ultimately, when our computers get faster and faster and more and more elaborate, we will have to make them smaller and smaller.
But there is plenty of room to make them smaller. There is nothing that I can see in the physical laws that says the computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller than they are now. In fact, there may be certain advantages.
Miniaturization by evaporation
How can we make such a device? What kind of manufacturing processes would we use? One possibility we might consider, since we have talked about writing by putting atoms down in a certain arrangement, would be to evaporate the material, then evaporate the insulator next to it. Then, for the next layer, evaporate another position of a wire, another insulator, and so on. So, you simply evaporate until you have a block of stuff which has the elements--- coils and condensers, transistors and so on---of exceedingly fine dimensions.
But I would like to discuss, just for amusement, that there are other possibilities. Why can't we manufacture these small computers somewhat like we manufacture the big ones? Why can't we drill holes, cut things, solder things, stamp things out, mold different shapes all at an infinitesimal level? What are the limitations as to how small a thing has to be before you can no longer mold it? How many times when you are working on something frustratingly tiny like your wife's wrist watch, have you said to yourself, ``If I could only train an ant to do this!'' What I would like to suggest is the possibility of training an ant to train a mite to do this. What are the possibilities of small but movable machines? They may or may not be useful, but they surely would be fun to make.
Consider any machine---for example, an automobile---and ask about the problems of making an infinitesimal machine like it. Suppose, in the particular design of the automobile, we need a certain precision of the parts; we need an accuracy, let's suppose, of 4/10,000 of an inch. If things are more inaccurate than that in the shape of the cylinder and so on, it isn't going to work very well. If I make the thing too small, I have to worry about the size of the atoms; I can't make a circle of ``balls'' so to speak, if the circle is too small. So, if I make the error, corresponding to 4/10,000 of an inch, correspond to an error of 10 atoms, it turns out that I can reduce the dimensions of an automobile 4,000 times, approximately---so that it is 1 mm. across. Obviously, if you redesign the car so that it would work with a much larger tolerance, which is not at all impossible, then you could make a much smaller device.
It is interesting to consider what the problems are in such small machines. Firstly, with parts stressed to the same degree, the forces go as the area you are reducing, so that things like weight and inertia are of relatively no importance. The strength of material, in other words, is very much greater in proportion. The stresses and expansion of the flywheel from centrifugal force, for example, would be the same proportion only if the rotational speed is increased in the same proportion as we decrease the size. On the other hand, the metals that we use have a grain structure, and this would be very annoying at small scale because the material is not homogeneous. Plastics and glass and things of this amorphous nature are very much more homogeneous, and so we would have to make our machines out of such materials.
There are problems associated with the electrical part of the system---with the copper wires and the magnetic parts. The magnetic properties on a very small scale are not the same as on a large scale; there is the ``domain'' problem involved. A big magnet made of millions of domains can only be made on a small scale with one domain. The electrical equipment won't simply be scaled down; it has to be redesigned. But I can see no reason why it can't be redesigned to work again.
Problems of lubrication
Lubrication involves some interesting points. The effective viscosity of oil would be higher and higher in proportion as we went down (and if we increase the speed as much as we can). If we don't increase the speed so much, and change from oil to kerosene or some other fluid, the problem is not so bad. But actually we may not have to lubricate at all! We have a lot of extra force. Let the bearings run dry; they won't run hot because the heat escapes away from such a small device very, very rapidly.
This rapid heat loss would prevent the gasoline from exploding, so an internal combustion engine is impossible. Other chemical reactions, liberating energy when cold, can be used. Probably an external supply of electrical power would be most convenient for such small machines.
What would be the utility of such machines? Who knows? Of course, a small automobile would only be useful for the mites to drive around in, and I suppose our Christian interests don't go that far. However, we did note the possibility of the manufacture of small elements for computers in completely automatic factories, containing lathes and other machine tools at the very small level. The small lathe would not have to be exactly like our big lathe. I leave to your imagination the improvement of the design to take full advantage of the properties of things on a small scale, and in such a way that the fully automatic aspect would be easiest to manage.
A friend of mine (Albert R. Hibbs) suggests a very interesting possibility for relatively small machines. He says that, although it is a very wild idea, it would be interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon. You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood vessel and it goes into the heart and ``looks'' around. (Of course the information has to be fed out.) It finds out which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and slices it out. Other small machines might be permanently incorporated in the body to assist some inadequately-functioning organ.
Now comes the interesting question: How do we make such a tiny mechanism? I leave that to you. However, let me suggest one weird possibility. You know, in the atomic energy plants they have materials and machines that they can't handle directly because they have become radioactive. To unscrew nuts and put on bolts and so on, they have a set of master and slave hands, so that by operating a set of levers here, you control the ``hands'' there, and can turn them this way and that so you can handle things quite nicely.
Most of these devices are actually made rather simply, in that there is a particular cable, like a marionette string, that goes directly from the controls to the ``hands.'' But, of course, things also have been made using servo motors, so that the connection between the one thing and the other is electrical rather than mechanical. When you turn the levers, they turn a servo motor, and it changes the electrical currents in the wires, which repositions a motor at the other end.
Now, I want to build much the same device---a master-slave system which operates electrically. But I want the slaves to be made especially carefully by modern large-scale machinists so that they are one-fourth the scale of the ``hands'' that you ordinarily maneuver. So you have a scheme by which you can do things at one- quarter scale anyway---the little servo motors with little hands play with little nuts and bolts; they drill little holes; they are four times smaller. Aha! So I manufacture a quarter-size lathe; I manufacture quarter-size tools; and I make, at the one-quarter scale, still another set of hands again relatively one-quarter size! This is one-sixteenth size, from my point of view. And after I finish doing this I wire directly from my large-scale system, through transformers perhaps, to the one-sixteenth-size servo motors. Thus I can now manipulate the one-sixteenth size hands.
Well, you get the principle from there on. It is rather a difficult program, but it is a possibility. You might say that one can go much farther in one step than from one to four. Of course, this has all to be designed very carefully and it is not necessary simply to make it like hands. If you thought of it very carefully, you could probably arrive at a much better system for doing such things.
If you work through a pantograph, even today, you can get much more than a factor of four in even one step. But you can't work directly through a pantograph which makes a smaller pantograph which then makes a smaller pantograph---because of the looseness of the holes and the irregularities of construction. The end of the pantograph wiggles with a relatively greater irregularity than the irregularity with which you move your hands. In going down this scale, I would find the end of the pantograph on the end of the pantograph on the end of the pantograph shaking so badly that it wasn't doing anything sensible at all.
At each stage, it is necessary to improve the precision of the apparatus. If, for instance, having made a small lathe with a pantograph, we find its lead screw irregular---more irregular than the large-scale one---we could lap the lead screw against breakable nuts that you can reverse in the usual way back and forth until this lead screw is, at its scale, as accurate as our original lead screws, at our scale.
We can make flats by rubbing unflat surfaces in triplicates together---in three pairs---and the flats then become flatter than the thing you started with. Thus, it is not impossible to improve precision on a small scale by the correct operations. So, when we build this stuff, it is necessary at each step to improve the accuracy of the equipment by working for awhile down there, making accurate lead screws, Johansen blocks, and all the other materials which we use in accurate machine work at the higher level. We have to stop at each level and manufacture all the stuff to go to the next level---a very long and very difficult program. Perhaps you can figure a better way than that to get down to small scale more rapidly.
Yet, after all this, you have just got one little baby lathe four thousand times smaller than usual. But we were thinking of making an enormous computer, which we were going to build by drilling holes on this lathe to make little washers for the computer. How many washers can you manufacture on this one lathe?
A hundred tiny hands
When I make my first set of slave ``hands'' at one-fourth scale, I am going to make ten sets. I make ten sets of ``hands,'' and I wire them to my original levers so they each do exactly the same thing at the same time in parallel. Now, when I am making my new devices one-quarter again as small, I let each one manufacture ten copies, so that I would have a hundred ``hands'' at the 1/16th size.
Where am I going to put the million lathes that I am going to have? Why, there is nothing to it; the volume is much less than that of even one full-scale lathe. For instance, if I made a billion little lathes, each 1/4000 of the scale of a regular lathe, there are plenty of materials and space available because in the billion little ones there is less than 2 percent of the materials in one big lathe.
It doesn't cost anything for materials, you see. So I want to build a billion tiny factories, models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneously, drilling holes, stamping parts, and so on.
As we go down in size, there are a number of interesting problems that arise. All things do not simply scale down in proportion. There is the problem that materials stick together by the molecular (Van der Waals) attractions. It would be like this: After you have made a part and you unscrew the nut from a bolt, it isn't going to fall down because the gravity isn't appreciable; it would even be hard to get it off the bolt. It would be like those old movies of a man with his hands full of molasses, trying to get rid of a glass of water. There will be several problems of this nature that we will have to be ready to design for.
Rearranging the atoms
But I am not afraid to consider the final question as to whether, ultimately---in the great future---we can arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms , all the way down! What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them (within reason, of course; you can't put them so that they are chemically unstable, for example).
Up to now, we have been content to dig in the ground to find minerals. We heat them and we do things on a large scale with them, and we hope to get a pure substance with just so much impurity, and so on. But we must always accept some atomic arrangement that nature gives us. We haven't got anything, say, with a ``checkerboard'' arrangement, with the impurity atoms exactly arranged 1,000 angstroms apart, or in some other particular pattern.
What could we do with layered structures with just the right layers? What would the properties of materials be if we could really arrange the atoms the way we want them? They would be very interesting to investigate theoretically. I can't see exactly what would happen, but I can hardly doubt that when we have some control of the arrangement of things on a small scale we will get an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have, and of different things that we can do.
Consider, for example, a piece of material in which we make little coils and condensers (or their solid state analogs) 1,000 or 10,000 angstroms in a circuit, one right next to the other, over a large area, with little antennas sticking out at the other end---a whole series of circuits. Is it possible, for example, to emit light from a whole set of antennas, like we emit radio waves from an organized set of antennas to beam the radio programs to Europe? The same thing would be to beam the light out in a definite direction with very high intensity. (Perhaps such a beam is not very useful technically or economically.)
I have thought about some of the problems of building electric circuits on a small scale, and the problem of resistance is serious. If you build a corresponding circuit on a small scale, its natural frequency goes up, since the wave length goes down as the scale; but the skin depth only decreases with the square root of the scale ratio, and so resistive problems are of increasing difficulty. Possibly we can beat resistance through the use of superconductivity if the frequency is not too high, or by other tricks.
Atoms in a small world
When we get to the very, very small world---say circuits of seven atoms---we have a lot of new things that would happen that represent completely new opportunities for design. Atoms on a small scale behave like nothing on a large scale, for they satisfy the laws of quantum mechanics. So, as we go down and fiddle around with the atoms down there, we are working with different laws, and we can expect to do different things. We can manufacture in different ways. We can use, not just circuits, but some system involving the quantized energy levels, or the interactions of quantized spins, etc.
Another thing we will notice is that, if we go down far enough, all of our devices can be mass produced so that they are absolutely perfect copies of one another. We cannot build two large machines so that the dimensions are exactly the same. But if your machine is only 100 atoms high, you only have to get it correct to one-half of one percent to make sure the other machine is exactly the same size---namely, 100 atoms high!
At the atomic level, we have new kinds of forces and new kinds of possibilities, new kinds of effects. The problems of manufacture and reproduction of materials will be quite different. I am, as I said, inspired by the biological phenomena in which chemical forces are used in repetitious fashion to produce all kinds of weird effects (one of which is the author).
The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big.
Ultimately, we can do chemical synthesis. A chemist comes to us and says, ``Look, I want a molecule that has the atoms arranged thus and so; make me that molecule.'' The chemist does a mysterious thing when he wants to make a molecule. He sees that it has got that ring, so he mixes this and that, and he shakes it, and he fiddles around. And, at the end of a difficult process, he usually does succeed in synthesizing what he wants. By the time I get my devices working, so that we can do it by physics, he will have figured out how to synthesize absolutely anything, so that this will really be useless.
But it is interesting that it would be, in principle, possible (I think) for a physicist to synthesize any chemical substance that the chemist writes down. Give the orders and the physicist synthesizes it. How? Put the atoms down where the chemist says, and so you make the substance. The problems of chemistry and biology can be greatly helped if our ability to see what we are doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is ultimately developed---a development which I think cannot be avoided.
Now, you might say, ``Who should do this and why should they do it?'' Well, I pointed out a few of the economic applications, but I know that the reason that you would do it might be just for fun. But have some fun! Let's have a competition between laboratories. Let one laboratory make a tiny motor which it sends to another lab which sends it back with a thing that fits inside the shaft of the first motor.
High school competition
Just for the fun of it, and in order to get kids interested in this field, I would propose that someone who has some contact with the high schools think of making some kind of high school competition. After all, we haven't even started in this field, and even the kids can write smaller than has ever been written before. They could have competition in high schools. The Los Angeles high school could send a pin to the Venice high school on which it says, ``How's this?'' They get the pin back, and in the dot of the ``i'' it says, ``Not so hot.''
Perhaps this doesn't excite you to do it, and only economics will do so. Then I want to do something; but I can't do it at the present moment, because I haven't prepared the ground. It is my intention to offer a prize of $1,000 to the first guy who can take the information on the page of a book and put it on an area 1/25,000 smaller in linear scale in such manner that it can be read by an electron microscope.
And I want to offer another prize---if I can figure out how to phrase it so that I don't get into a mess of arguments about definitions---of another $1,000 to the first guy who makes an operating electric motor---a rotating electric motor which can be controlled from the outside and, not counting the lead-in wires, is only 1/64 inch cube.
I do not expect that such prizes will have to wait very long for claimants.
Gilder From Shanghai....
George likes China...
A recent email in a reply to a Telecosm Lounge query about nanotech companies.
Note the ref to Carver Mead's book wherein he shows - with integral equations even - that Einstein was right; and many of the widely assumed basics of "quantum" physics are wrong.
==========================
9/18/03 11:03:07 PM
I am still Shanghaied, breathless in some backwater of my biological clock, stricken with SARS (Shanghai Anaerobic Reflex Syndrome), seventy stories above the pullullating streets, looking out through mists at the most astonishing feat of macrocosmic urban development and most explosive epidemic of capitalism in world history. Tens of thousands of spectacular skyscrapers and curvacious lateral structures and millions of new businesses summoned on rice paddies in less than five years. Coming from the US, where rebuilding the World Trade Towers is beyond our bureaucratic reach and the "Big Dig" in Boston takes 15 years and we cannot build a mall if it molests a snail darter, the feat of Shanghai and scores of other Chinese cities is beyond belief. No Potemkin bubble, occupancy is over 80 percent and values in the real estate market are soaring.
This country represents by far the most formidable challenge and opportunity the US has ever faced. But talking with Chinese technologists for the last week, the only mention of nanotech came from a woman from the Esquel Group, allegedly the world's leading contract manufacturer of clothing, for everyone from Guess to Abercrombie, who looks to nanotech to provide fabrics for jeans that can endure nuclear copulation in a trans-Pacific Andiamo bag without creasing. Although I am much impressed by Josh Wolfe as a writer and analyst, as far as I know he has not uncovered a single company that performs authentic nanotechnology--the atom by atom creation of new machines and materials--that Eric Drexler conceived and prophesied.
By the legerdemain of raising the bar to 100 nanometers, well above atomic dimensions where Nick Tredennick trafficks with MEMs, Wolfe could treat conventional microelectronics innovators such as IBM, Veeco, KLA Tencor and nvec as "nanotechnology." By these standards, the disk drive companies, with their use of quantum electron spin in the new heads, were the first nanotechnology players, and semiconductor capital equipment firms such as Applied Materials and Nikon or even my favorites Semitool and longshot JMAR are virtuosos of nanotech exceeding all the nanotech list.
The fundamental concept of nanotech--that quantum effects are to be defined as small and subject to mechanical manipulation--is erroneous, as Carver Mead shows in his book Collective Electrodynamics and my daughter's impending book will also dramatize. Quantum phenomena reach across the universe and are supra-mechanical. The effects that "nanotech" uses are molecular, and more chemical than physical. Most of the companies with real products are in the biotech and medical instruments domains. At some point after I return I will discuss some of them and perhaps I can persuade Nick alos to address these ventures, which he discussed in early issues of Dynamic Silicon and at the Dynamic Silicon conference.
--GG
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Reading..listening...understanding
I read that when people talk in person to other people, the listener is doing a lot of parallel processing and anticipating wht the end of the sentence might be long before it is completed. Japanese syntax and grammar are such that as two people talk, the talker can read the reactions of the listener and before he gets to the end can change the whole meaning with the last word of two; typically to avoid giving offense.
Cell phone text messaging and chat don't have this. "Telepresence", the promised full interconnect of HD/HiRes sight and sound between people - "like being there" - might add enough to make it a truly unique experience, but not certainly to duplicate in-person "interaction".
This was lifted from an email to Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online:
"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."
Now that wasn't very hard to understand, was it? Maybe Pig Latin works a little like this in talking. Mebbe dislexia is like this?
Perhaps Seriously Criminal Spammers and the Heroic AntiSpam Fighters are learning something from this.
Mij Hslaw
Monday, September 08, 2003
PowerPoint - Just Say No
A Colleague sent me a PowerPoint presentation that he had sent to a Prospective Client. Without “giving” the presentation in person, throwing a PPT slide show over the transom leaves a lot to be desired in furthering the sales process. Selling is about listening, not telling. And PPT does not even “tell” stuff well.
“PowerPoint allows speakers to pretend that they are giving a real talk, and audiences to pretend that they are listening.”
Edward Tufte is a professor-emeritus at Yale. His books on graphics are treasures – wonderful insightful writing as well as layout an dillustrations that are beautiful and very effective in cimmunication quantitive data.
He’s taken a look at Microsoft’s PowerPoint, and has some seriously critical things to say about it in a Brochure - The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. A few quotes will not do his work justice. Go to his site and buy it for $7.00. Although not available (I don’t think) as an “e-document”, it is a work meant to be printed, held, looked at and experienced in person (as are his books).
EdwardTufte.com
Sunday, September 07, 2003
Local Mountain Music
Most music written in the last fifty years or so does nothing for me...but here in Bull Shoals we get to hear some locals occasionally.
Saturday was the Arkansas State Chili Cook Off Championship at the Town Park. You could taste all the entries and then vote for the “People’s Choice” favorite; a separate batch was made for the judges. It made a great late-morning lunch, even with the necessary consequences later that evening.
The highlight was the music of the two Grizzly Bear Boys (“What happened to the third guy?” “Oh he went back to his wife. We miss him for awhile every time he does that.”)
Two long-bearded mountain fellows on banjo and guitar. Here's a sampling of the wonderful lyrics – make up the twangy accompanying music for yourself:
“ The Interstate is coming thru our outhouse, they tell us we’re on their right of way…”
====================
“ Take the rope bush from my hair
Pick out all them little thorns
Hey what’s the sprinkler doin’ on
So dang early in the morn
Crawlin’ home at 5am
Oh this sidewalk sure is hard
Guess I drank too much again
Help me make it thru the yard..”
======================
Man she’s all tatooed, wearin’ army boots a miniskirt and white tube socks
She’s got nose rings, and other pierced things
Looked like she fell in a tackle box
She looks just right behind a Michelob Light
Makes her look like a center folder…
I guess beauty’s in the eyes of the beerholder…
===============
Best friend that I ever had run off with my wife,
And left me here alone to face the changes in my life.
The best friend that I ever had stole my wife somehow,
I never liked him much before but lord I love him now
==============
And the Classic –
Don’t
Pet
the Dog.
Don’t pet him whatever you do
He ain’t been fixed
And he knows some tricks
That’ll sure make a fool out of you
Don’t Pet the Dog
He gets it confused with romance
Just leave him alone
Or the next thing you know
He’ll be askin’ your ankle to dance
==================
And the sobering –
There’s Nothing Funny About A Woman With A Gun…
Monday, September 01, 2003
Cars and California
From NRO - the Corner
========================
Cars and Enemies
========================
WHY THE LEFT HATE CARS [Andrew Stuttaford]
In response to an aside in an earlier post that mentioned this topic, a reader kindly sent in a link to this excellent article by James Q. Wilson. I wouldn’t agree with all of it (pedestrianization, for example, generally rips the heart out of cities), but it’s well worth a read, especially this closing section:
“But even if we do all the things that can be done to limit the social costs of cars, the campaign against them will not stop. It will not stop because so many of the critics dislike everything the car stands for and everything that society constructs to serve the needs of its occupants.
Cars are about privacy; critics say privacy is bad and prefer group effort. (Of course, one rarely meets these critics in groups. They seem to be too busy rushing about being critics.) Cars are about autonomy; critics say that the pursuit of autonomy destroys community. (Actually, cars allow people to select the kind of community in which they want to live.) Cars are about speed; critics abhor the fatalities they think speed causes. (In fact, auto fatalities have been declining for decades, including after the 55-mile-per-hour national speed limit was repealed. Charles Lave suggests that this is because higher speed limits reduce the variance among cars in their rates of travel, thereby producing less passing and overtaking, two dangerous highway maneuvers.) Cars are about the joyous sensation of driving on beautiful country roads; critics take their joy from politics. (A great failing of the intellectual life of this country is that so much of it is centered in Manhattan, where one finds the highest concentration of nondrivers in the country.) Cars make possible Wal-Mart, Home Depot, the Price Club, and other ways of allowing people to shop for rock-bottom prices; critics want people to spend their time gathering food at downtown shops (and paying the much higher prices that small stores occupying expensive land must charge). Cars make California possible; critics loathe California. (But they loathe it for the wrong reason. The state is not the car capital of the nation; 36 states have more cars per capita, and their residents drive more miles.)
Life in California would be very difficult without cars. This is not because the commute to work is so long; in Los Angeles, according to Charles Lave, the average trip to work in 1994 was 26 minutes, five minutes shorter than in New York City. Rather, a carless state could not be enjoyed. You could not see the vast areas of farm land, the huge tracts of empty mountains and deserts, the miles of deserted beaches and forests.
No one who visits Los Angeles or San Francisco can imagine how much of California is, in effect, empty, unsettled. It is an empire of lightly used roads, splendid vistas, and small towns, intersected by a highway system that, should you be busy or foolish enough to use it, will speed you from San Francisco to Los Angeles or San Diego. Off the interstate, it is a kaleidoscope of charming places to be alone.
Getting there in order to be alone is best done in one of the remarkably engineered, breathtakingly fast, modern cars that give to the driver the deepest sense of what the road can offer: the beauty of its views, the excitement of command, the passion of engagement.
I know the way. If you are a friend, you need only ask.”
