Quiet, a rare commodity

I just read an interesting piece in the British magazine Car. The writer told of being in Venice recently, where for a precious few minutes the schedules of all the water taxi's and other water-borne traffic failed to converge. There was no motorized noise at all. An occasional splat of a gondolier's oar hitting the water, a nearby conversation, a dropped coin hitting the pavement....but no motorized noise.

I take my dog out for a walk very early every morning, usually before traffic starts to build for the day, and I marvel at the calmness and quiet of that early hour. Imagine having the quietness of living far out in the country, yet still living right in the heart of a city with all the conveniences of city life still handily available.

If electric cars ever become universal and all internal combustion engines are idled, that's what cities of the future could sound like. (That's a BIG if.) Except Big Brother wants electric cars to emit a noise to alert pedestrians so they can pull their heads out of their ----- long enough to see what they're stepping in front of. Imagine that cacophony of beeps and squeals and chirps. I guess that idyllic peek into the future was short lived, huh? I say, "butt out, Big Brother". A little cleansing of the gene pool might actually be a good thing. Just kidding. Sort of.

Looks like "quiet" will become an even rarer commodity in the future. But by then we'll all be either dead or deaf, so I guess it's a moot point.

S