From Human-Centered Design to Human-Centered Society

3 Transportation and Defense

DOI: 10.4324/9781003462361-3

The vignettes in Chapter 2 addressed shipping, railroads, energy, steel, and finance. In this chapter I look at transportation in more detail, adding automobiles and airplanes, with a brief foray into defense, a reasonable segue from airplanes. I first discuss innovations in transportation and then consider the resulting societal exploitations. I then elaborate on the nature of these exploitations in the defense industry.

Innovations in Transportation

The history of the transportation industry is, in many ways, synonymous with the history of the growth and industrialization of the US. Before the early 1800s, the dominant forms of transportation – horse, stagecoach, sailing ship, and ...