My sense is that the complexity of bikes has risen proportionally with the extent to which* riders have agreed to make bicycling complex*. Decades ago, we as riders didn't much care about quantifying the power put to the pedals, then in the late 80s, powermeters became a thing. Then as our society became more and more technologically insatiable, electronic groupsets blew up in the early 2000's...then folks decided *wireless* groupsets had to be a thing (first released only 4 years after the first iPad). Our wireless, digital, always-connected world had to permeate all aspects of our life -- at least *all* companies did a good job marketing that to us.
The video makes a good callout with the "Tesla-fication" of cars. Not just EVs, but now we see full ICE cars with giant touchscreens that nestle basic climate controls and radio features behind menus. Cars have over-the-air updates like our smartphones. We continue to pay monthly subscriptions to use features on the cars we own that the manufacturers say should be as-a-service. We're starting to see this with bikes, but on the other side we're also seeing a proliferation of small independent bike shops who rehab older frames with quality new parts and sell those bikes instead of the latest big-box arguments of how bikes should be. The good news is that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. On Friday, May 24, 2024 at 6:51:13 AM UTC-4 larson....@gmail.com wrote: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuO4fV1qq8&t=3348s > I thought this was an interesting discussion, certainly for us Rivendell > owners. I know Russ can be polarizing, but I like his approach to cycling > and appreciate his thoughts. > Randy in WI > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/c1e821b8-17ea-4cd3-9a59-f643ef6c340en%40googlegroups.com.
