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Automatic Gears Are the 20-Year-Old Bike Tech Nobody Asked For
- ramesh31 3y agoThere have been an unimaginable number of "improvements" to the bicycle over the last hundred years. And all of them have one thing in common: trading off a reduction in efficiency for "insert something else". But that "insert something else" is literally only a problem to people who don't ride bikes, so it ends up being entirely pointless. The modern geared bicycle is up there with things like the paper clip or the can opener as "perfect" designs which can never be fundamentally improved upon again short of advances in basic material science.
- pie420 3y agoYep, it's sad to see that capitalism can't let perfected things stay perfect, and instead has to squeeze more and more out. this inevitably leads to decline and increased prices. Enshittification is just the modern shape of this, as the capitalist cycle of prototype -> first generation product -> perfected product -> enshitified product is just much quicker when the only product is software. See facebook, spotify, netflix, etc.