I happened to turn on the television this morning and heard columnist George Will interviewing the CEO of General Motors. In one question he referred to something I found interesting, a comment made by GM’s Robert Lutz. I found a link referring to his comment (read it here) which quotes Mr. Lutz. Here’s what got my attention:

Robert Lutz, head of GM’s product development, says, “We’re not in the transportation business, we are in the arts and entertainment business.” Ford, perhaps with his Mustang in mind, emphatically agrees: “There’s a high emotional component to buying decisions.”

The other ingredient of revival must be better products. Meaning, among other things, cars that better express the emotional rather than just the utilitarian — the “arts and entertainment” as well as the transportation — aspect of cars.

Interesting to me is that this sounds like some kind of revelation. Didn’t the Big Three realize this years ago? And if it is a revelation for them, and assuming they’re more progressive than most industries, what does that say about all the supposed “design & innovation” sweeping corporate America?

One word: Hype.

I see more and more small companies trying to follow this overblown “trend”, and in so doing contribute to it. But most often their idea of design is strictly aesthetics – not rethinking the problem, the solution, or the processes they use; the one’s in which they have so much invested. When the issue is no longer newsworthy, maybe then things will have changed. Wake me from cryo when that happens.

During my life I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the American “Heartland”. I spent much of my time growing up, going to school and working in it. Today I still have friends and family thoroughly land-locked deep within it. But what I hadn’t done in quite some time was take a good, long drive through it… until a couple of weeks ago. And much of what I saw – mostly from the main highways – was pretty depressing.

In the 1980’s I regularly made the trip from Indiana to Oklahoma and back. I even had regular stops along the way (for instance, Collinsville, a once small ‘burb east of St. Louis was a favorite stop of mine). It was mostly wide-open country back then; eyesores dotted the landscape but they didn’t define it. What I saw on this most recent trip however, was a section of the nation now seemingly drowning in junk. In fact, driving I-44 through Missouri felt a little like driving through a country junkyard. The once beautiful landscape seemed filled with trash and trailer homes. I’m sure there are nice areas in Missouri, but I undertook this 3000-mile long drive in large part to see the changes and make a relevant – if subjective – comparison; and the view from the highways I once regularly traveled is a common denominator. If it wasn’t some small farm cluttered with rusting hulks and oversized, mult-colored plastic playground toys, it was some newly-built, architecturally-uninspired Mega Self-Storage Mall. Putting a nice(?) wrapper on junk doesn’t mean it isn’t junk anymore. I’ve seen self-storage facilities go up all over, but I’ve not seen them quite so big, quite so ugly and quite so far out in the middle of nowhere. Makes me wonder what I’d find in Texas where everything is supposed to be bigger.

It just so happens that while staying overnight in one midwestern motel, Frontline’s story on Wal*Mart was being re-broadcast (Link). I turned it on just before the part where a Port of Long Beach spokeswoman talks about what America is importing from China and what we export back (correction: what LITTLE we export back). Hey, maybe those rustcar-collecting farmers in the “Show Me” state are waiting for scrap metal prices to go up. You never know. In the meantime, I guess they’re just contributing to the new scenic vistas.

And speaking of scenic views, one sight took the cake. While mega-sized American flags advertising fireworks stands were a regular sight (sorry, I just can’t help but take offense at the flag being used for advertising), one view almost caused me to drive off the rode. Driving eastbound through road construction after St. Louis, I was greeted by the most tasteless (and dangerously distracting) structure I’ve ever encountered: a mega-sized cross right next to a bend in the highway. Next to the cross was a billboard which included a URL to a donation website (sorry, I won’t be linking to it). I memorized the URL because while I was tempted to get out and snap a picture of my very own, the road construction was problematic. I figured the site would have it’s own picture which I could share with you. Here it is (it’s much bigger and much gaudier in person).

Here’s another view snapped and posted by someone else – Link.

There’s something frighteningly surreal about having the radio scanning the airwaves for a decent station, picking up only rap, Christian talk-radio, and “Mega-Rock” music from the 70’s and 80’s, while staring up at this monstrosity. I bet they have a store that sells Big Ass Cross earrings and memorabilia too. Made in China.

{Image Copyright © 2005 The Effingham Cross Foundation}

Amazing how much can happen in just a couple of weeks. I’ll confess to feeling a little overwhelmed at just the things I’ve noticed in this short time period; can hardly imagine how many people out there must feel. Someone should consider a promotional re-release of Future Shock. Or better yet, writing an updated sequel.

Like most people this time of year, I’ll be taking a bit of a break from my normal routine to do some other, holiday-related stuff. Of course I expect that there will be continued attempts to deface this site so I’ll apologize in advance for any script-kiddie breaches from the l33t haxors who miraculously [/sarcasm] manage to bring down a site using old, outdated code. Anyway, expect things to be back to normal in early January.

Til then, best wishes to everyone out there.

Just a quick pointer over to an entry on the Simulation weblog where there’s a post discussing machine consciousness. I’ll need to hit the links in the entry over the holiday break as it’s always a fascinating subject and one I’ve not recently given much thought. Here’s the Link.

This is also probably a good time to make note of a new addition to the links list on the left. Last week I added a new site: AI Buzz (Link). I think it’s a new site (I caught the announcement over on GameDev). Might be one worth peeking in on from time to time to see what’s going on in that world.