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As in architecture, so in automaking. In a given cost range, the same technology tends to produce the same solutions. The visual evidence for this is as obvious for cars as for buildings. Today, if you choose models in the same price range, you will be hard put at 500 paces to tell one makefrom another. In other words, the specifically American traits that lingered in American automobiles in the 1960s--traits that linked American cars to American history--are disappearing. Even the Volkswagen Beetle has disappeared and has taken with it the visible evidence of the history of streamlining that extends from D'Arcy Thompson to Carl Breer to Ferdinand Porsche.
汽車制造業(yè)的情形也像建筑業(yè)的情形一樣。在一定的成本范圍內(nèi)，相同的工藝技術(shù)就能產(chǎn)生相同的產(chǎn)品。證明這一點(diǎn)的直觀證據(jù)在汽車方面和建筑方面一樣，都是顯而易見(jiàn)的。今天，如果要你在同一價(jià)格檔次的各型汽車中進(jìn)行選擇，從距離五百步的地方看是很難分辨出各種不同牌子型號(hào)的汽車的。換句話說(shuō)，六十年代里美國(guó)汽車還保留著的美國(guó)特色--美國(guó)汽車中那種與美國(guó)歷史相聯(lián)系的特點(diǎn)--正在逐漸消失。甚至連德國(guó)的大眾汽車公司的大眾甲殼蟲(chóng)型汽車也喪失了自身原有的特色，而通過(guò)自己車型的變化演示了從達(dá)西·湯普森到卡爾·布里爾到費(fèi)迪南德·波爾舍一代一代的流線型汽車設(shè)計(jì)發(fā)展史。
If man creates machines, machines in turn shape their creators. As the automobile is universalized, it universalizes those who use it. Like the World Car he drives, modern man is becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer quite the product of a unique geography and culture, he moves from one climate-controlled shopping mall to another, from one airport to the next, from one Holiday Inn to its successor three hundred miles down the road; but somehow his location never changes. He is cosmopolitann. The price he Pays is that he no longer has a home in the traditional sense of the word. The benefit is that he begins to suspect home in the traditional sense is another name for limitations, and that home in the modern sense is everywhere and always surrounded by neighbors.
人創(chuàng)造了機(jī)器，而機(jī)器反過(guò)來(lái)也能塑造其創(chuàng)造者。由于汽車已普遍化，使用汽車的人也就司空見(jiàn)慣了。現(xiàn)代社會(huì)的人像他們駕駛的世界流行汽車一樣正變得越來(lái)越彼此雷同。他們不再具有鮮明的個(gè)性特征，再不是某個(gè)特殊地理文化環(huán)境里孕育出來(lái)的特殊個(gè)人了。他們可以從一個(gè)裝設(shè)空調(diào)的市場(chǎng)到另一個(gè)市場(chǎng)，從一個(gè)機(jī)場(chǎng)到另一個(gè)機(jī)場(chǎng)，從一個(gè)假日酒店到三百英里外的另一家酒店，不停地旅行運(yùn)動(dòng)，但他們所處的環(huán)境卻可能永遠(yuǎn)一個(gè)樣。他們是世界人，他們?yōu)榇烁冻龅拇鷥r(jià)是他們不再擁有一個(gè)傳統(tǒng)意義的家。他們從中得到的好處則是開(kāi)始覺(jué)得傳統(tǒng)意義上的家是牢籠的別稱，而現(xiàn)代意義的家則無(wú)處不是，自己身邊周圍的人又無(wú)不是自己的鄰友。
