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But it is in the technical objects suited for the road network that the
resistance opposed to the development of the technical mentality is the
clearest: obsolescence hits the passenger car much faster than the utility
vehicle or the agricultural tractor, which nevertheless are its close
cousins—the car ages faster than the plane, whereas the plane has technically gone
through more important transformations than the car. This is because the plane is made for the runway and for the air. It is necessarily a network
reality before being a separate object.
The car is not only conceived as a network reality—like trucks—but as a
social object, an item of clothing in which the user presents himself. It thus
receives characteristics like the ones one used to wear on clothes and that overburdened
them with lace and embroideries... these scurf-like ornaments of psychosocial
life—here, they become paint, chrome, antennae. The social importance can also
express itself through mass, volume, and the size of the vehicle.
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