Imagine that it's 1925 and I am a clever, experienced mechanical engineer. I look around at the "tech" world of the time and notice some disturbing things:
- the rising power of literally fascist CEOs like Henry Ford
- What began as an inefficient, quirky novelty toy for rich people, the automobile, has become "normal" and started to dominate public space
- rising levels of fossil pollution
- the rising monopoly power of Oil companies
- dangerous levels of stock-market speculation
- brutal exploitation of people and environmental destruction in mining and rubber producing (mostly colonial) regions
- the use of debt to get less wealthy consumers to buy cars
- scores of innocent pedestrians injured or killed by automobiles
- urban planning that increasingly favors more expensive cars over other users of the streets
- declining sense of importance of shared forms of transportation like trolleys and trains
As an engineer, I look at all those rising issues and then I say:
"What we need is an Open Source Model-T Ford with some slightly better safety features."
In retrospect, that would seem like a pretty inadequate response.
