This Glorious Machine

Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe
or, perhaps, inventing something worthy of a heartfelt “eureka.” Look: zipping
through traffic on my first e-bike, blitzing past the stuffy tin cans all
around me, I’ve become master of the four winds. Now first place in a
triathlon, now a mythical creature that can move at the speed of thought. Upon
my trusty electric 6-gear steed I am Hermes, lord of heavenly motion.

And the sound! An e-bike makes every thunk, whip, and whirl that you might find
in a comic book: gears rattling, spokes spinning. Just listen to this thing go!
I’m dashing between cars and blurry, bipedal pedestrians, and right now, on my
first ride to work, I can’t stop smiling.

I’m smiling because, unlike so many promises that tech has failed to deliver,
e-bikes are genuinely worthy of an hour-long presentation delivered in a
turtleneck. If a computer is a bicycle for the mind, then an e-bike is a
bicycle for our bicycles, a wonder of micro-mobility as they reimagine our
relationship with our bodies and our cities and even with the future of
technology itself.

Simply put...

E-bikes aren’t a dumb tech grift. [1]#

As I weave through double parked cars and brave pedestrians, I see that this
bicycle with an electric motor has returned the hope I’d lost over the years.
Here, listen, it whispers: tech doesn’t have to be a con or make us the worst
versions of ourselves. Look: technology has kept its promise and genuinely made
the world better!

My e-bike is pulling me into an alternate dimension where tech isn’t designed
to be a grift from the start, as these two-wheeled bad boys aren’t only here to
generate shareholder value; they’re designed to help.

I’m halfway through my ride now and it’s dawning on me that this little e-bike
of mine offers a critique against tech culture as a mere profit-generating
tool, sure. But this machine comes with a vision, too. A vision of what a city
should be and how we ought to navigate it.

It’s clear from this ride that our cities have been built all wrong as for more
than a century we’ve incentivized cars to segment and separate our country into
human-free zones and endless freeways with generic, Lego-like blocks copy and
pasted in between. Although, my e-bike, as brilliant as it may be, is a
well-designed hack on top of all that. It’s a patch on top of poor city
planning and underfunded public infrastructure.

Our cities don’t have to work like this and e-bikes show us a clear way out:
every e-bike is a manifesto for lost common spaces, huge sidewalks with giant
trees above and local shops within walking distance. Parks! Places you can sit
down! Shade! Shelter! Not just an in-between place or a hurdle to
circumnavigate between your job and your home, e-bikes argue for a city to be
proud of instead. And isn’t that what tech was supposed to do, show us a way
out?

Wasn’t tech supposed to show us the future?

E-bikes are more punk rock than punk rock. [2]#

For a decade my primary method of transportation was a motorcycle. Back in my
early 20s I believed there was nothing more punk than an exploding hunk of
metal beneath me. Roaring, screaming through dinky villages in Devon or across
the sparse and shining cities of southern California.

Bicycles were the opposite of all that freedom. For decades I associated them
with my childhood and being trapped in my tiny hometown without access to the
wider world. Bicycles weren’t objects of desire or of longing because they
simply weren’t fast or loud. And to be cool there always has to be volume and
speed. Drums? Fast. Loud. Cool. Hip hop? Same. Motorcycles? What did you say? I
can’t hear you because my eardrums have shattered and all that remains is a
wonderful, heart-stompingly loud vibration in my chest; loudness personified
and loudness eternal.

But now, as I’m slipping between cars on my first e-bike after two decades of
being a total jerk and looking down on cyclists, I’m embarrassed to say I’ve
thoroughly learned my lesson. Bicycles, and e-bikes specifically, are genuine
wonders. Somehow strapping an electric motor onto a bicycle changes everything
for me.

Here’s the kicker though. E-bikes aren’t cool because of the way they look or
how loud they are and they’re certainly not cool because they turn heads or
make strangers jealous. Instead, e-bikes don’t care about cool. They argue for
a new kind of world where technology is genuinely helpful, where technology
doesn’t have to be cool at all.

Technology can just do the job it’s meant to.

E-bikes are the future we deserve. [3]#

Almost home now, stopping for a kid to cross the street. She’s smiling and
dancing, oblivious to the world around her, but now she’s caught sight of me,
looking me up and down. Slowly, she raises her hand up to her head in the shape
of an L.

Who knew that a simple gesture could undo years of therapy in a flash? And
sure, I might very well be a nerd, a loser, perhaps even a dreaded cyclist now
but no matter how much I love this machine it will never be truly cool. But
isn’t that...fine?

Cool tech is overrated anyway. We tend to think of cool in all the wrong ways
because we only see cool as loudness and speed and aluminum, presented on stage
to glorious fanfare. We see minimalism and a hefty price tag or the
unrealistic, bewildering promise that can’t possibly be kept and we think
that’s cool. Yet we tend not to think about hearing aids or MRI machines or
clean drinking water or contact lenses. We don’t think of small, meaningful
progress as cool and this limits our understanding of what technology is
capable of and what role we should play in it.

As someone who’s worked in tech for more than a decade (sorry) I’ve seen how a
lot of folks in the industry are terrified of making something merely useful.
It must be important! It must scale! It must have a million eyes on it! And
I’ve sat through meetings where progress isn’t measured by real progress, but
rather a bunch of abstract numbers in an ugly spreadsheet. So—ranting aside—I
reckon technology can only truly help us if we ignore what’s cool. Imagine no
more handsome, turtlenecked speeches or rapturous applause. Imagine no more
dumb catchphrases or logo redesigns or promises that can’t possibly be kept.

Rather, e-bikes ask us a new and exciting question:

What if we made something useful instead? [4]#

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References:

[1] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#e-bikes-aren't-a-dumb-tech-grift.
[2] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#e-bikes-are-more-punk-rock-than-punk-rock.
[3] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#e-bikes-are-the-future-we-deserve.
[4] https://robinrendle.com/stories/this-glorious-machine/#what-if-we-made-something-useful-instead