In 1915, Ed Klein, a seller of harnesses, put out an advertisement in Lawrence Journal World, a local newspaper in Kansas. It was an appeal to people to not buy this new gadget called the car, and continue buying horses for transportation. It mentioned a horse named Dobbin (added to give the appeal emotional draw, a classic advertising trick) who was very low maintenance, needed no expensive fossil fuels, and didn’t depreciate as an asset on the balance sheet. The appeal was desperate. Henry Ford had already come up with the concept of assembly line manufacturing in 1913, and by the time of Klein’s ad, he could produce a car in 93 minutes flat. He famously said, “If I ask people what they want, they would say faster horses.” He was right. Much of the research over the 100 years preceding Ford’s statement was on making horses faster, stronger, and, probably, poop less. The stench of horse manure was so bad, cities must have felt like marketing department meeting rooms.

The key issue was that the horses of 1877 were barely distinguishable from the horses of 1876. Four percent faster maybe? One would never know. Hundred years later, the same is happening with........

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