Ah yes, the perennial meaningless award of the year, from a magazine in its death throes (ok, that was pretty redundant, wasn't it).
Speaking of stupid, look at who Time picked as Person of the Year.
Anyhow, this will come as a surprise, but I actually don't disagree about the Volt being picked. It's a neat car, probably the neatest of what came out this year. GM's problem--they could have used having the Cruze lauded that way, as the Cruze is where they need to be hitting home runs. Sad to say, sales aren't looking so home-runny at the moment for what is likely the best small car GM has ever offered for sale in the US.
Marc said 1 day later
I can probably agree with everything except the Time person of the year. It's probably a suitable time to pick him too. At the very least, he's gotta go up there at some point, he has changed the way nearly everybody in the world uses the internet. Whether for good or bad is an argument all its own. :)
Dad was mentioning that the Volt sold out of its initial batch, which is not too unexpected since they didn't build a lot, but that's still good news for GM.
GJ said 1 day later
Changed the way people use the internet? No, I disagree. That honor goes to the mobile phone. That's been the absolutely biggest change in the way people use the internet. Facebook's changes have been largely limited to the web.
I would agree Facebook is a killer app for the web, but then again so was Yahoo once upon a time. Google still is (both web and internet at large), and IMO it's still a bigger killer app than FB. I don't think I've seen Sergey Brin on the cover of Time yet. Nor have I seen Steve Jobs, who one could make a great argument that he's far bigger of a game changer then Zuckerberg.
But FB has been a significant app, for sure. This year, though? I'm thinking that if not for the movie, he doesn't make Man of the Year.
Geoff said 1 day later
I think Zuckerberg has earned some credit. Facebook has exploded (and social media in general) and has become an essential tool for communication. Who needs to pick up the phone or send a text? They will have well over a billion users by next year...that is incredible. Mobile devices may have changed the way we access the internet, but what are we accessing? Email and Facebook. Lot's of incredible technology out there that deserves credit for changing our world, including Apple and Google, and yes, Facebook.
Steve said 1 day later
I tend to think Facebook is one of the biggest hits of the year. Sad to say, but both Parsla and I spend a lot of time on it daily, either playing games, checking out people's status messages, looking at pictures from events we attended, watching cool videos of racing cars, etc.
As for the Volt, I voted for it for car of the year. It is by far the boldest move any automaker has made recently, and the first to get into the plug in hybrid market. In my opinion, it is a beneficial car to many potential people. Forget the 35 mpg it gets on gas alone. Think about someone that commutes 15 miles each way to and from work, in heavy traffic. Say, like Kristen. This thing would use hardly any fuel, assuming it got plugged in every night. It would be a huge environmental improvement over driving a normal gas car that is constantly exhausting emissions while sitting in traffic.
I do wish the Volt was a bit cheaper - and in 5 years or so, I bet cars like and including it will be, once the cost of production comes down.
I think The Volt is 100 times more impressive than the Nissan Leaf full electric car. And it's 10 times more impressive than the new Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, which of itself is pretty good based on cost, or the Ford Fusion Hybrid, which gets a pretty awesome 41 mph city (EPA rating, and 5-6 mpg better than the Sonata hybrid), but costs about $4K more than the Sonata.
I do wonder if car companies will ever decide to limit the top speed of cars to 80 or 85 mph. That would open up the ability to develop more aerodynamic cars without having to worry about high speed stability. See the little wing on the back of the Volt? Limit the top speed of the car to 80 mph (not the 100+ it's able to go), and you can probably drop that and net even better highway energy economy.
Another thing that would help - roads. Smoother roads, lower resistance roads. All this focus on the cars themselves - how about the government doing something about the roads? Not to mention building roads to handle the amount of traffic, and setting up traffic lights that are timed and adjust automatically for driving conditions.
And now that I've gone on this wayward rant about environmental improvements to transportation, I have to bring back mass transit. We are probably, no definitely, the furthest behind in mass transit of any developed country. Where is our high speed rail? How about mass transit in cities? China has a new passenger train that is comfortably cruising at 260 mph. That's half as fast as a plane, and I believe a heck of a lot better for the environment.
/rant
GJ said 2 days later
Mass transit doesn't work in this country due to the sparse population here. Our cities, especially in along the eastern seaboard, north-east, and north-central parts of the country are so decentralized that mass transit doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Heck, in many of those cities, people not only don't live there, they don't work there either. It's just a entertainment (read: consumption) destination.
I think you'll see top speed limiters in concert with automated traffic--and that may be the only form of "mass transit" that works here, at least until our population hits 600M-800M (not likely anytime soon). It won't be a great development for people that enjoy driving--in fact, it'll likely be the end of the customized personal car. OK, I should stop...I have all sorts of garbled theories along this line, but no time or energy to go into them just now. Tummy growlin!
