Driving in circles.

I had been sharpening a cynical edge in the months leading up to this issue, seeing our planned coverage of an automotive topic as a jump-off point to rant about recalls, questionable designs, and the constant marketing barrage of vehicles that can't produce better than 20 miles per gallon at a time when the price of gas.... well, you likely know the rest. No point in my rehashing what others have already opined, and in the process dumping additional hot air into the summer steam. Besides, I was able to replace my small station wagon with a used minivan (to help accommodate additional family members), and while I regrettably went back to a V6 (from a four), I actually found one where I can service the spark plugs without necessitating an assistant standing by with the Jaws of Life. Thus, my hostility is slightly diffused.

A few weeks back, however, I experienced a bit of synchronicity, having to do with an article in a vintage magazine, and a book that arrived on my desk just a few days later. Regarding the first, a stop at a flea market yielded up a July 1947 issue of Popular Mechanics. In it was an essay written by Mr. Charles Kettering, then-vice president of GM, titled "Where Are Our New Frontiers'?" Kettering had, by this time, more than four decades of patents and inventions to his name, including many significant to the early evolution of the motorcar. Kettering first wisely admits to an "inability to predict specific developments." He then addresses the 80 years up to 1940 in two-decade blocks, divided broadly into the Railroad Era (and the bloom of civil engineering), the Electrical Era, the Mechanical Era (automobile and airplane) and the Chemical Era (plastics). Of 1940 to 1960, he first points to the rise in research, citing that "the number of scientific personnel in industrial research laboratories has nearly doubled since 1940." Following ongoing trends of research, Kettering then foresees an era marked by research and further development of atomic fission, petroleum refining, metallurgy and plastics, the breaking of the sound barrier, studies using the recently-invented electron microscope, and advances in treatment of disease. The prognostications were exemplary of Mr. Kettering--pragmatic observations made from a wide-view study of recent developments.

Three days later, there arrived on my desk a copy of The Design of Things To Come (Wharton School Publishing, $26.95). Because of the Kettering article, I was expecting a crystal-ball discussion--instead, the book explores the move of design front invention to innovation, defined by authors Craig Vogel, Jonathan Cagan and Peter Boatwright as "the business of finding opportunities in the marketplace and of developing products to achieve those opportunities." They also use the phrase "pragmatic innovation," loosely defined as "a process of inspired management of diverse teams working on a significant opportunity in the market."

At this point, my eyes glazed over. I failed to grasp the value of a redesign of the Ford F150 pickup, one of the book's examples, and what it meant to consumers, other than a perceived status. In fact, several other examples also seemed to be products that were status-driven or, worse, status-inducing. Pragmatism is a practical approach to affairs--it does not convey carte blanche to delude people into buying SUVs and trucks, extra fries with their cheeseburger, or six-burner gas barbecues, simply because more equates as 'better.' Weighed against the rampant consumerism of the last thirty years, this form of innovation is just more marketing in someone's self-interest.

This month in Design History: 1841--Venetian blinds are patented--first installed in the Louvre.

Richard Mandel Editor in chief