No one said they wanted faster horses, they wanted less horseshit | Hacker News Reader

No one said they wanted faster horses, they wanted less horseshit

helloerik.com

26 pointspessimizer14 comments

The author starts off by asserting that Ford never said what is popularly thought he said.

And then he starts his discussion with his own assumption: "Here are some of the things people would have responded with if you asked a mid-late 19th century city planner what he needed with regards to equine transportation:"

I think it would have been a stronger argument to just list a few sources of information.

But besides that, I think the article raises some interesting points. For me, I don't want a faster car, I want fuel efficiency. I want a car that doesn't require too much maintenance and repairs.

Googling isn't immediately getting me anything and I don't recall the source, but I used to read a lot of urban planning books and I recall seeing a quote from that era to the effect of "Mud! Mud everywhere!" and complaining about it. "Mud" was a euphemism for horseshit. So that was a real complaint of the time.

Though the internet did not exist at the time so I don't know if it is even possible to find quotes/resources about it online. That may be part of why he kind of speculated rather than listing a few sources of information.

It might have become sensationalized over the last 115 years, but you can google the Urban Planning Summit of 1898 to see where it all originals from. The sentiment. I did have to make up and just guess at what real manure problems would be besides "faster horses", but they at least make some sense and paint a mental image. I'm no historian =D

Here's a classic piece of data journalism on the topic:

'This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted... “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”'

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-...

Well, I made the assumption on the springboard of the World Urban Planning Summit of 1898, where horse manure was discussed for 3 of the 10 days with international city planners from all types of cities.

Granted, it's a thought piece on the abuse of "faster horses" myth that is often used to subtly circumvent user research and experience discussions.

But even today, like you say, no one says they want faster cars. I think today people might say they don't want a car at all, or a affordable Tesla, or if you go back 15 years, we thought it was a Segway.

> For me, I don't want a faster car, I want fuel efficiency. I want a car that doesn't require too much maintenance and repairs.

If we're talking about cars, my version of "horseshit" is traffic and parking. I do not want to drive in traffic, and I want parking to either be a non-issue or abundant.

Congestion-based pricing and paid parking. Or do you also want free?

I think the point is that I don't really care how it's done, I just want it to work. I'd love to pay for road use, up to the point that transaction costs swamp things (like when people have to stop or slow down when going through toll booths). Hopefully it'll be solved through pricing. Maybe there's a technological solution (potentially if short-distance air travel were cheaper you could imagine that a 3D space with very little infrastructure to maintain might solve at the very least the traffic problem).

Now instead of the waste of transportation being localized near the person using the transportation, we've dispersed it throughout the global atmosphere and no one knows what to do about it.

Slightly OT, but relevant: I still want less horeshit. The Toronto police / RCMP ride horses down the bike paths in Toronto, and sometimes they leave giant shits in the middle of the path. The disrepect to cyclists and the rest of the city is immense. It's dangerous, it's smelly and it's extremely rude. They do this in Montreal too - the police horses leave giant shits all over the Mont Royal paths. Please stop leaving horseshit everywhere Canada. Seriously.

"Look, I'm riding a horse! Isn't it pretty?"

In Boston we'd have cop-horses leaving their several-gallon-sized gifts all over town. Once a coworker (known for paroxysms both inside and outside the company) encountered some in front of our building and he got hopping mad on the phone to start screaming. I cooled him down enough to say it was in front of the fast food store on the first floor, not our business, because if the BPD has any blacklist for assholes he was going to get us put on it.

Classic modern day problem. Maybe I should go amend the article.

That's interesting. A lot of trails here that are crushed limestone and such near ranches have to explicitly post signs that say "No horses" to also stop this problem.

We have a lot of trails that hikers, bikes and horses share. But then some of the trails will allow hikers and horses but not bikes. This really pisses off the bikers, since there doesn't seem to be a reason for it. And in general, a lot of people are really pissed off that dog owners can get fined for not picking up a tiny dog turd while equestrians see no threat of that for their horse dropping a huge load in the middle of the trail.

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