Bicycles in the Digital Age
There are more bicycles than cars made in the world today. So what role might they be playing in the opening time of the Digital Age?
The first, at least known, bicycle had no breaks and no chains. You stopped by, well, crashing. Humans have a tendency to do this quite often with new technologies. Crash, then innovate. With the rise of electric vehicles and the wistful promise of automated vehicles, one may think bicycles are a bit on an outlier. On the technology extinction list. Quite the opposite.
You might also be wondering what on earth bicycles have to do with our future and the digital age. Possibly, quite a lot.
Bicycles have played an important role in society since their invention. They were slower to take off at first, like most technologies are. Culture, which includes economic and political systems, social governance and of course, customs and traditions, works in peculiar and unpredictable ways with regard to technology.
The first bicycle that had pedals was invented by French gentleman by the name of Pierre Lallement. His contraption was called a velocipede (which sounds a bit like a dinosaur centipede), but it had no gear chains or again, brakes. Why stop when you can keep going?
The next iteration of the bicycle was the penny-farthing (the big wheel being large like a farthing and the small wheel bing like a penny.) It went considerably faster and was superbly designed for the execution of the perfect face plant should it hit a small bump. Also, still no brakes.
Eventually, brakes did come along. With same sized front and rear tires and more sensible handlebars, chain gears and a diamond shaped frame. This version was aptly named the safety-bicycle. Now you could stop and have a chinwag with someone without doing a face plant first.
For the bicycle, it enabled people to move about a little bit more freely. Obviously. Perhaps more importantly though, the bicycle played a key role in the freeing of women in society.
The first known woman to challenge the convention that women should only wear dresses when doing functional sporty things was Angeline Allen. She wore trousers when cycling about. And quite proudly so. She caused quite the sensation in 1893 peddling around Newark, New Jersey. A newspaper thought it important enough to write the headline “She wore trousers!” Including the salient (sigh), facts she was pretty and divorced.
It is an example of societal and cultural reactions to a new technology. People were less concerned with what she was actually doing, but rather what she was wearing, was you and pretty and divorced. Some things haven’t changed much. Women who do important things in the world are still criticized over such unimportant things.
Today, bicycles have evolved, thankfully so has women riding them too. Popular today are eBikes with some form of electric motor to reduce pedalling needs. Some have fat tires for snow. They are designed for various activities from Olympic racing to mountain biking. Fortunately, they all have brakes.
Even with all of this, one might still assume more cars than bicycles are made. The reality may be surprising, but it is logical. Bicycle manufacturing it increasing. In 2012 about 130 million were made. In 2022 it is estimated over 143 million were made. And eBikes are outselling electric vehicles (EVs). Research indicates about 608,000 EVs were sold whereas 880,000 electric bikes were sold in the USA. So there’s that. Pedal to the metal.
Bicycles have grown in use in developing nations, helping connect communities and children get to school faster rather than walking many miles. They may well play a role as cities change over the coming decades.
There is much talk about the 15 minute city, where everything is within 15 minutes of walking from where you work to grocery and other stores. Could be a 5 minute city by bicycle.
As one who lives in Canada, I do question the idea of riding about in -20C during a snowstorm. Heated seats and handlebars aren’t really a big sales pitch. I digress.
That said, bicycles still make a lot of sense. Countries like the Netherlands continue to invest heavily in infrastructure that integrates bicycles heavily into urban and even rural, culture. India has also invested heavily in bicycles for rural areas. One can expect that increasingly denser cities will see an increase in such infrastructure.
Bicycles are quiet, they take up far less space, require less mechanical work and are more pedestrian safe. We are starting to re-think the dominance of the car and question why so much infrastructure and even laws, have been designed to protect the car and the rights of a car over a pedestrian and cyclist.
While the first, unsurprising innovation to come along for bicycles was to slap on a battery, while smartly leaving brakes on, we may well see a strong of new innovations in the coming years. Given our current economic system of capitalism, this will no doubt include ways to haul stuff more easily. Hopefully improvements in braking systems will be included as more stuff means more weight which means more braking power needed.
Bicycles are set to play a more important role in our digital futures than we might at first assume. We are already seeing signs. This is the force of culture at work. Auto manufacturers won’t be going out of business anytime soon, but how we use cars, how we think about them, may be starting to change. Sometimes, analog fits in quite well with digital.