In Cars

A strange thought occurred to me this evening while riding with Hurricane and our little tropical depression (who sometimes is more of a squall) back to Ms. H's apartment. I noticed a number of used cars for sale at a repair/inspection place and I began thinking that if one were to watch Antiques Roadshow religiously (and some do,) one would never see an automobile brought up to determine, based on expert advice, what its worth might be.

There are a number of reasons for this, but I think the most salient is that the mass-produced automobile was a (perhaps the)major precursor of the information age. The creation of a piece of machinery that cost around a quarter of what a home did, and was mass-produced in such a way that an individual machine was indistinguishable at a glance from others, necessitated a way to more exactly track the product. This led to the creation of the Vehicle Identification Number, a unique serial number that could be used to identify a vehicle. Each manufacturer kept an index of the VINs for a variety of reasons, primarily to keep track of what options and characteristics a vehicle had. It had a parallel value as an unique identifier in case of theft.

The whole point of a show like Antiques Roadshow is that there is a question as to the paternity (or maternity) of a given object. Mass manufacturing obviates the need for an expert, or the determination of authenticity, by making the product trite. The author of the product is no longer a craftsman, but at best a designer, and usually a corporation. The artistry is gone and in its place is the product. The development of the Universal Product Code (UPC) is the same story writ large over the whole universe of consumer products. One might argue that its incorporation into our lives represents the triumph of the assembly line over the mastery of the craftsman. No longer are gifted individuals rewarded for their ability to create items by hand, they are rewarded only by their ability to design products that do well in an industrial manufacturing setting.