为什么房屋和汽车仍然以老式的方式建造?

这个话题是那些让我发疯的事情之一。我们可以建造能够抵抗飓风、地震、洪水以及其他自然和人为灾害的房屋。我们可以制造更轻、更省油的汽车。

就像老电视节目《无敌金刚》(the Six Million Dollar Man)的开场一样，我们有技术。那么为什么我们不使用它呢?原因是建造房屋、汽车和其他东西的人需要接受再培训，但结果将是一个更可持续、更安全的世界。当我上周接受Arris Composites公司的简要介绍时，这个想法就在我脑海中闪过。

Arris是一家小公司，它得到了一家更有实力的风投公司的支持，他们知道如何以低成本生产复合材料。它的技术可以让汽车更安全，更省油，更能抵御事故。它可以使房屋几乎坚不可摧。它的技术甚至可以为航空业做出惊人的贡献，因为波音梦想客机等飞机已经转向了复合材料。

那么，为什么Arris不是一个家喻户晓的名字呢?为什么我们还在用老办法做事?这周让我们来探讨一下这个问题，我将以本周的最佳产品——微软推出的新款Surface笔记本电脑——作为结束。

原文：This subject is one of those things that drives me nuts. We could build homes that stand up to hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and other natural and human-made disasters. We could build cars that are lighter and more fuel-efficient.

Like the opening for the old TV show, "The Six Million Dollar Man," we have the technology. So why don't we use it? The reason is that people who build homes, cars, and other things would need to be retrained -- but the result would be a more sustainable and safer world. This thought was going through my head when I was being briefed by Arris Composites last week.

Arris is a small company backed by one of the more powerful VCs that figured out how to do composites at scale cheaply. Its technology could make cars safer, more fuel-efficient, and far more resistant to accidents. It could make homes nearly indestructible. Its tech could even do amazing things for the aircraft industry, which, with planes like the Boeing Dreamliner, has already moved to composites.

So why isn't the Arris a household name? Why are we still doing things the old fashioned way? Let's explore that this week, and I'll close with my product of the week, the new Surface Laptop Go from Microsoft.