If you open any book by American scientist and historian Jared Diamond to any page, you will find something fascinating, like this from page 291 of Guns, Germs and Steel : In 1905, motor vehicles were still expensive, unreliable toys for the rich. Pubic contentment with horses and railroads remained high until World War I, when the military concluded that it really did need trucks. Intensive postwar lobbying by truck manufacuteres and armies finally convinced the public of its own needs and enabled trucks to begin to supplant horse-drawn wagons in industrialized countries. Even in the largest American cities, the changeover took 50 years. This passage should be a revelation to anyone born since World War II. No one alive today remembers a time when the public did not believe itself to be drawn to a culture of cars and trucks, noise and pollution, injury, death and speed for its own sake. No one remembers it because the memories have been aggressively erased by various ...
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