Raising The Bar

- Sean Li

MANY OF THE machines that we use in our daily lives tend to get sleeker as they evolve over the years. Take cellular telephones, for example; you would be hard pressed to carry the very first ones in a bag, let alone a pocket. Televisions, although larger in diameter, are considerably less voluminous today than in the era of the cathode ray tube (some of you may even wonder what I’m referring to). Along with this, there seems to be an inverse correlation with their inherent power; today’s laptop computers can perform much more complex operations, and store a massive amount of data, compared to a decade ago. I still occasionally come across computer memory cards in my drawers that hold – wait for it – a whole 32 megabytes. Today, I have single images that wouldn’t fit on those cards.

However, there is a particular type of machine that doesn’t have this inverse correlation; while they have undeniably gotten more powerful and energy efficient, they have also grown considerably in size. I am, of course, referring to cars. Every generational iteration of a car model seems to get a little bit wider, longer, more voluminous. I acknowledge that much of this is due to modern safety regulations, which have made cars considerably less of a danger, not only to their occupants, but to other cars and to pedestrians as well. Roads aren’t getting any wider though; there is a legacy road network around the world that simply can’t get torn up and replaced. Anyone who’s new to parking a car in a hong Kong garage will immediately wonder whether the architects simply got their measurements wrong – either that, or they never thought that we just might need to open the doors to get out of the car.