130 lines
6.7 KiB
Plaintext
130 lines
6.7 KiB
Plaintext
This Glorious Machine
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Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe
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or, perhaps, inventing something worthy of a heartfelt “eureka.” Look: zipping
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through traffic on my first e-bike, blitzing past the stuffy tin cans all
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around me, I’ve become master of the four winds. Now first place in a
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triathlon, now a mythical creature that can move at the speed of thought. Upon
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my trusty electric 6-gear steed I am Hermes, lord of heavenly motion.
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And the sound! An e-bike makes every thunk, whip, and whirl that you might find
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in a comic book: gears rattling, spokes spinning. Just listen to this thing go!
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I’m dashing between cars and blurry, bipedal pedestrians, and right now, on my
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first ride to work, I can’t stop smiling.
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I’m smiling because, unlike so many promises that tech has failed to deliver,
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e-bikes are genuinely worthy of an hour-long presentation delivered in a
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turtleneck. If a computer is a bicycle for the mind, then an e-bike is a
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bicycle for our bicycles, a wonder of micro-mobility as they reimagine our
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relationship with our bodies and our cities and even with the future of
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technology itself.
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Simply put...
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E-bikes aren’t a dumb tech grift. [1]#
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As I weave through double parked cars and brave pedestrians, I see that this
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bicycle with an electric motor has returned the hope I’d lost over the years.
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Here, listen, it whispers: tech doesn’t have to be a con or make us the worst
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versions of ourselves. Look: technology has kept its promise and genuinely made
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the world better!
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My e-bike is pulling me into an alternate dimension where tech isn’t designed
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to be a grift from the start, as these two-wheeled bad boys aren’t only here to
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generate shareholder value; they’re designed to help.
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I’m halfway through my ride now and it’s dawning on me that this little e-bike
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of mine offers a critique against tech culture as a mere profit-generating
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tool, sure. But this machine comes with a vision, too. A vision of what a city
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should be and how we ought to navigate it.
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It’s clear from this ride that our cities have been built all wrong as for more
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than a century we’ve incentivized cars to segment and separate our country into
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human-free zones and endless freeways with generic, Lego-like blocks copy and
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pasted in between. Although, my e-bike, as brilliant as it may be, is a
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well-designed hack on top of all that. It’s a patch on top of poor city
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planning and underfunded public infrastructure.
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Our cities don’t have to work like this and e-bikes show us a clear way out:
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every e-bike is a manifesto for lost common spaces, huge sidewalks with giant
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trees above and local shops within walking distance. Parks! Places you can sit
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down! Shade! Shelter! Not just an in-between place or a hurdle to
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circumnavigate between your job and your home, e-bikes argue for a city to be
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proud of instead. And isn’t that what tech was supposed to do, show us a way
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out?
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Wasn’t tech supposed to show us the future?
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E-bikes are more punk rock than punk rock. [2]#
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For a decade my primary method of transportation was a motorcycle. Back in my
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early 20s I believed there was nothing more punk than an exploding hunk of
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metal beneath me. Roaring, screaming through dinky villages in Devon or across
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the sparse and shining cities of southern California.
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Bicycles were the opposite of all that freedom. For decades I associated them
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with my childhood and being trapped in my tiny hometown without access to the
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wider world. Bicycles weren’t objects of desire or of longing because they
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simply weren’t fast or loud. And to be cool there always has to be volume and
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speed. Drums? Fast. Loud. Cool. Hip hop? Same. Motorcycles? What did you say? I
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can’t hear you because my eardrums have shattered and all that remains is a
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wonderful, heart-stompingly loud vibration in my chest; loudness personified
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and loudness eternal.
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But now, as I’m slipping between cars on my first e-bike after two decades of
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being a total jerk and looking down on cyclists, I’m embarrassed to say I’ve
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thoroughly learned my lesson. Bicycles, and e-bikes specifically, are genuine
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wonders. Somehow strapping an electric motor onto a bicycle changes everything
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for me.
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Here’s the kicker though. E-bikes aren’t cool because of the way they look or
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how loud they are and they’re certainly not cool because they turn heads or
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make strangers jealous. Instead, e-bikes don’t care about cool. They argue for
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a new kind of world where technology is genuinely helpful, where technology
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doesn’t have to be cool at all.
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Technology can just do the job it’s meant to.
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E-bikes are the future we deserve. [3]#
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Almost home now, stopping for a kid to cross the street. She’s smiling and
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dancing, oblivious to the world around her, but now she’s caught sight of me,
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looking me up and down. Slowly, she raises her hand up to her head in the shape
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of an L.
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Who knew that a simple gesture could undo years of therapy in a flash? And
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sure, I might very well be a nerd, a loser, perhaps even a dreaded cyclist now
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but no matter how much I love this machine it will never be truly cool. But
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isn’t that...fine?
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Cool tech is overrated anyway. We tend to think of cool in all the wrong ways
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because we only see cool as loudness and speed and aluminum, presented on stage
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to glorious fanfare. We see minimalism and a hefty price tag or the
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unrealistic, bewildering promise that can’t possibly be kept and we think
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that’s cool. Yet we tend not to think about hearing aids or MRI machines or
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clean drinking water or contact lenses. We don’t think of small, meaningful
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progress as cool and this limits our understanding of what technology is
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capable of and what role we should play in it.
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As someone who’s worked in tech for more than a decade (sorry) I’ve seen how a
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lot of folks in the industry are terrified of making something merely useful.
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It must be important! It must scale! It must have a million eyes on it! And
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I’ve sat through meetings where progress isn’t measured by real progress, but
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rather a bunch of abstract numbers in an ugly spreadsheet. So—ranting aside—I
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reckon technology can only truly help us if we ignore what’s cool. Imagine no
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more handsome, turtlenecked speeches or rapturous applause. Imagine no more
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dumb catchphrases or logo redesigns or promises that can’t possibly be kept.
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Rather, e-bikes ask us a new and exciting question:
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What if we made something useful instead? [4]#
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[footer]
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References:
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[1] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#e-bikes-aren't-a-dumb-tech-grift.
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[2] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#e-bikes-are-more-punk-rock-than-punk-rock.
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[3] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#e-bikes-are-the-future-we-deserve.
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[4] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#what-if-we-made-something-useful-instead
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