Friday, February 15, 2013

Tesla vs. Broder

I am loving the fight between Tesla and John M. Broder, the NYT hack. Broder's story about not being able to drive a Tesla Model S to Boston was responded to with a blizzard of data by Musk, the CEO of Tesla. In turn, Broder's story has turned from - I'm a normal guy on a normal drive and the model S failed me -  to I'm a clueless guy calling Tesla personnel every five minutes and they told me nasty lies which made me screw up my drive. 
Some tech writer on the web wrote that the response to this dispute differs between the automobile fans and the tech fans - the former are, predictably, all pro-Broder, the latter find him laughable. Polls show that the Ute, or Youth as they are also known, don't like cars. They like computers. I think this is a shot in that war. The automobilists cling to the gas powered car as though their whole lifestyle were at stake. And they aren't wrong. That lifestyle is at stake, and it is in its last stages. The automobile went from a liberating technology to a chain around our necks. I'm not sure Tesla's car is the solution to that, but it is different. And that unsettles the old hacks. Broder's account reads, after his corrections, more like trying to teach grandpa how to use email than a savvy consumer in a hyped up failure. I am amused how the press, in defense of one of their clueless own, is springing to Broder's defense. There is a priceless article in Slate which relies on the famous "objectivity" of the NYT to defend Broder - which is the kind of argument that can only be made by those so far in the tank that, like those sea snails you buy for acquariums, they are at the bottom, cleaning up the excrement.

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