While I disagree that hydraulic brakes are a significant hurdle for home mechanics having learned to bleed hydraulic car brakes at 12 years old, and the author

While I disagree that hydraulic brakes are a significant hurdle for home mechanics having learned to bleed hydraulic car brakes at 12 years old, and the author is probably wrong about electronic shifting as well, the fact is all these technologies are purely optional. I ride several thousand miles a year on bikes, road and mountain, with rim brakes and mechanical shifting, and have never felt the need to "upgrade." Apart from the fork and seatpost on one of my road bikes, there's also no carbon fiber anywhere to be found. I don't ride competitively (and most competitive riders don't personally maintain their racing bikes), but in the groups I ride with my bikes are the "lowest tech" and always the oldest, usually by a decade or two, and I'm almost never the slowest in the group. That being said, many people like the newest technology, be that bikes, cars, cell phones, whatever, and that's fine. This same article could have been written (and was, many times) about integrated index shifters when they came out over 30 years ago (Shimano STI in particular, as Campy Ergopowers, at least Record, are rebuildable, if you can find spare parts for your 25 year old Titanium Record 9 Speed shifters). One of my road bikes, with well over 10k miles on it, has the original Shimano 105 levers, still kicking. Yes, if they break, I will probably not be able to repair them, but I also can't repair a broken aluminum chainring, I just get a new one. E-bikes are a bit of a different story, but that's largely because of ignorance and fear of electricity and how it works more than anything else. It may prove to deter some people from getting their hands dirty on their bike, which is a shame, but if you just look at the size of the e-scooter hacking community, that should put to rest the notion that it's an absolute barrier to entry.