Our culture gives us our definitions of "progress" and "improvement." Take the side view mirror of an automobile. Once it was a humble slab of mirror attached to a basic frame that swivels on a ball joint that could be adjusted by rolling down the window, sticking your hand out, and moving it into a useful position. Now it is operated electronically by several switches, and costs many hundreds of dollars to fix or replace. And for what? To save a few calories of small muscle movements?It doesn't save time, these things can take longer to adjust. (And now I understand these gizmos will be replaced by video cameras, and this will be mandatory as per the federal government.)
Many people will consider this evolution of the side view mirror inevitable proof of human genius, an obvious sign of progress. But it is only replacing an existing object with debatable added benefits and lots of drawbacks--added complexity in extraction of raw materials, assembly (probably by robots) difficulty of repair, additional damage to the environment, cost to the consumer. This complexity also makes the supply chain much more vulnerable, as various parts come from different factories, etc. The same factors are at work with, for instance, carbon fiber. This material is more complex to produce, cannot be easily modified or repaired or recycled or upcycled, uses high amounts of energy to produce, is made of a substance we are running out of, etc etc. And the sole benefit, when you cut to the chase, is saving weight on a product that, unless you are a professional bike racer (or a missile engineer, the original application), does not need weight savings (or heat protection). And even so, I recall that bike racing provided a decent amount of entertainment before the advent of carbon fiber and wattage meters, no? I have to laugh so not to cry when I see these dramatic commercials pitching "smart phones." As though something that takes pictures and can tell you in a funny voice where is the best place to get the best macchiato is some sort of dramatic achievement for humankind. Or that it does anything that can't be done without an overpriced status design object made in China (a country in the advanced throes of the world's largest case of indigestion from biting off more industrialization than it could chew--the fallout for the global economy will not be pretty, especially in combination with the many other dilemmas currently coming to a head.) Going beyond Illich's second watershed comes with high prices--to the environment, to the social fabric of society, to our psyches. The debts from all of our wondrous gadgets and our industrially designed lifestyle, both literal and figurative, are all coming due in a hurry. But right now my Clementine is calling to take me to work. On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 11:06:05 PM UTC-5, Patrick Moore wrote: > > > Granted, focus on sale has produced, by accident, many great improvements; > but obviously it does not do so consistently and generally. Carbon fiber is > probably a great improvement for some uses; for a city hybrid bike? I don't > think so. 1X12 drivetrains may be useful for some situations; does the > rider of the urban hybrid need 3X9? And so forth. > > -- 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 post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
