intelliLinux A blog about Innovation and Information

So, I know this is supposed to be a blog focusing on innovation, technology, and hopefully the convergence of the two. That is why this story is tagged under "Volkswagen"; The original Volkswagen, the type 1, or Beetle, was filled with innovation, and used technology from the latest in aerospace at the time. It was an incredible car for what it was designed to do, and was in production from 1938 until 2003 - 65 years.

Those crazy Germans...

The car was first prototyped in 1931, and was known as the Porsche 60, the KdF-Wagen, and finally as the Beetle after it's Third Reich creators were defeated at the end of World War II. So, yes, it's true that the car was designed and built originally by Nazis, but just because they were racist, murdering, hateful people doesn't mean they couldn't innovate! During the war the VW platform was used as the basis for an amphibious vehicle and a jeep-like military vehicle and afterward was the basis for a sports car (Karmann-Ghia), a van (Type 2 / Transporter), and others (Type 3/ Square/Fast/Notch Back). These cars were very reliable, and at 25 mpg, were very competitive to the tons heavier fuel guzzling offerings other car companies were coming out with at the time. It took until 1978 (47 years) for the car to become uncompetitive with the latest models from other cars, and even then it still used simple components - the drivetrain is totally air cooled, has one belt, 4 bolts to remove the engine and another 4 to remove the transmission, it has essentially no major non-user serviceable parts.

I own a Volkswagen Beetle, and I am always amazed at what that car can do. It was built in 1968 (40 years ago), but i have trouble keeping it below 75 MPH on the freeway once it has warmed up. It gets 26 miles per gallon right now, and I haven't done a full tune-up on the thing in probably 5 years. The car is zippy, it's fun, it even has a heater that works well enough for most days. (from what I've read the heater is adequate for even cold days if you make sure all the ductwork is clean, hole free, and you have all the right gasgets in place - basically if that system is in good condition.)

What can we learn from this?

As the innovators and creators of the technology of tomorrow, we can learn quite a bit from this. Basically the Volkswagen is the model for what technology should strive to be - simple, easily repaired, flexible, and capable of incredible longevity. For the arena of software, this could mean open standards, good programming practices, clean and simple APIs, and a solid plan for how the software will grow with time. I'm not a hardware junkie, but for hardware, I imagine the implications would be much the same, especially as we have begun to reach the point where leaps in performance are no longer attained through refinements in processor speed, but through greater parallelism.

The idea of technology being useful in this way and for these time periods is not really new - in fact it's the stuff a lot of sci-fi is built around. In the Stargate series, alien tech is more like cars or furniture is in our reality - incompatibility, outdatedness, and unmaintainability are unheard of for these devices, even after thousands of years.

I can't even think of four technologies including x86 architecture and UNIX that have achieved this kind of benchmark. 47 years of productive, useful, competitive service for a technology is unheard of, and - just as importantly - almost unimaginable. Why? what can we do to change this? Is it possible? Sure, architectures and APIs can become stable and reusable for a long time, but what about complete systems? What would the world be like after the introduction of a complete computing system that with regular maintenance can remain competitive for 47 years? Windows 98 is no longer competitive, after only 10 years, and hasn't been for some time. Even XP will no longer be provided to manufacturers as of June 2008, 7 years after its introduction. So, you see, mainstream software is not even close to providing this kind of durability either.

Of course the world of open source is far from mainstream yet, altough it is getting closer. Linux may be able to meet this bar one day - the tiny, incremental changes and frequent releases that OSS typically provides are a significant parallel to the way Volkswagen developed its cars - one year at a time, using small changes to provide a final product that outlived so much of its competition.