7 ms·

How the Internet affected kiteboarding

65 points by richardburton 13y ago

mstrem 13y ago
Internet has made a big difference for kite boarding, but I would say it has had the same effect on windsurfing recently so I don't think the comparison is necessarily correct. Rather it is the differences in the sports themselves that are making windsurfing lag behind: 1) windsurfing is much harder to learn and not as enjoyable at first (in fact it can be a pain) so people give up quicker 2) kitesurfing, for the new guy, is a lot more spectacular and gets a lot of "wows" on the beach, so it attracts more people 3) I must admit kitesurfing equipment is a lot lighter and easier to carry around 4) Windsurfing, being an older sport, has an "old" image. People generally think its slow and boring, and that you need huge waves to have fun. However things have changed drastically. Take a look at a few videos on http://www.continentseven.com http://www.continentseven.com to see what I mean
- samskiter 13y ago
  Side discussion- As a kitesurfer/snowboarder/skater I think can appreciate the more technical aspects of windsurfing and not just look for 'wow' factor. But what I find difficult to watch in freestyle windsurfing is the 'sinking' or 'stopping' after tricks. It seems that in order to do anything really impressive you're going to just stop after you land. I think the best looking tricks in windsurf (and all of these sports actually) are ones where you leave the tricks with (close to) speed you entered with - such as certain tricks done on waves or some of the less technical 'pop' tricks. To me the root of this problem really comes down to the size of the gear you are having to throw around. In comparison, kitesurfing really frees your body up when riding and allows you to move around more in the air, as well as providing a 'pull' from with more freedom of control than a windsurf sail.
  - mstrem 13y ago
    Well actually, you can do nearly all the tricks in windsurfing without stopping and sinking and coming out of it planing... it is just incredibly difficult to do though. Even the top surfers don't manage very often
  - twp 13y ago
    The developments in acrobatic paragliding follow a similar theme: it used to be you'd do trick A, then resume normal flight, then do trick B, resume normal flight, trick C, etc. Now it's all about instantaneous transitions between tricks. Pal Takats's video explains it brilliantly and impressively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9lncIP4ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9lncIP4ac Strongly recommended!
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Wind surfing doesn't seem old and boring to me. I see it as the next stage in evolution after the Laser.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    For those who are confused by silverstorm's statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(dinghy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(dinghy)
- richardburton 13y ago
  It's true that windsurfing has progressed enormously in the last 10 years. However, the sport began in the 80s before the internet was commonplace and so its development was stunted in the beginning. I should have made the graph more clear.
  - randall 13y ago
    You should mention Skateboarding. Kickflips took years to catch on because people only saw Rodney Mullen in skate-shop distributed VHSes.
    - richardburton 13y ago
      That's really interesting. Although I've played around with a longboard I never got into skateboarding in a big way so I wouldn't feel qualified to write about it. Another interesting example is the Triple Cork in snowboarding: Torstein Horgmo debuted it in 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGqkq3QqRE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGqkq3QqRE And now they're expected at each X Games: http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000194812/featuresobf/two-new-triple-corks-at-2013-x-games-big-air-torstein-horgmo-wins/ http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000194812/featuresobf/tw...
      - goatforce5 13y ago
        Speaking of X Games and skateboarding... Tony Hawk's first 900 was pretty neat. He was getting close to doing it, but couldn't quite nail the landing and it was decided to let him just keep trying until he got it. Even though it was over regulation time and it took him 10 tries they awarded him first place and none of the other competitors protested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/900_(skateboarding) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/900_(skateboarding) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YYTNkAdDD8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YYTNkAdDD8
- troebr 13y ago
  Windsurfing also requires stronger winds. ~13/14 knots is enough to kite and jump around, and I think you need 3/4 knots to windsurf comfortably.
  - BrandonMarc 13y ago
    I think you have that backwards ..
Fuzzwah 13y ago
I've recently got back into skydiving after a break of 7 years. The explosion of go pro videos, youtube and discussion forums has had a similar effect as described in this article. Combined with the ease of spreading info was the proliferation of indoor skydiving wind tunnels. Being exposed to a new idea and then being able to practice it in the tunnel for an hour with out having to make 60 skydives means the lag between innovative ideas to wide spread adoption is so remarkably short now.
- Retric 13y ago
  Unfortunately, I think with the more dangerous sports this progress is associated with a lot of people pushing way beyond there skill level. Skydiving is a fairly dangerious sport, but base jumping + wing suit + near terrain following is practically suicidal. It looks awesome on YouTube, but they don't give any indication of wind which is absolutely critical etc etc. Edit: youtube.com/watch?v=PPmWOA9cVM4&feature=plpp PS: Check out birdmen the original dream of flight on netflix and take note of how many times they mention dead people.
  - base698 13y ago
    Yep, out of 17 BASE accidents this year 15 were in a wing suit. I didn't do a wingsuit BASE jump until I had over 200 BASE jumps and 1400 skydives. Now every new skydiver rushes to do it after a single year of experience, and the numbers show what a great idea that is.
    - base1018 13y ago
      Didn't think I'd run into a BASE jumper on Hacker News. Certainly wouldn't have thought he or she would have a BASE number as low as yours... I don't jump anymore, but I was active from 2003 to 2007ish. Curious if we've met elsewhere, online or irl... drop me an email if we did.
- mrb 13y ago
  Where the heck do you find an indoor skydiving wind tunnel that you can use solo for one contiguous hour?
robomartin 13y ago
A very interesting message hidden in this post is that software patents are bad for innovation. Perhaps I am stretching things a bit by going from kitesurfing to software patents. The idea popped into my mind when I read passages like these: "In the early days, there were small pockets of kiteboarders spread across the world. These pioneers didn’t work in isolation; they were able to share their ideas on sites like KiteForum.com. They posted clips of new tricks that they’d landed, improvements they’d made to their gear, safety tips, amazing new locations, and anything else they thought other kiteboarders should know." "The lag time between someone inventing a new trick and everyone else catching up is much smaller when the innovators can distribute their ideas instantly." Think about where we would be if companies didn't have to spend billions of dollars to acquire patents and, instead, invested that money towards driving true innovation.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  DEMOCRATIZING INNOVATION- by Eric Von Hippel talks about this and uses a few extreme sports (including the birth of mountain biking) as examples: http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm edit: Just checked and kitesurfing gets three mentions in the index and is the main non-software case study of chapter 7.
  - tmp3098512 13y ago
    Yet the most widespread kite design today is patented and was developed secretly by two men. Nevertheless, I agree with the author that in the early days collaboration (and competition) between innovative kitesurfers drove the sport forward. Even today the innovation does not come from the main manufacturers who do nothing but repackaging last year's models.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      In the book Hippel talks about two different kinds of innovation, one which "lead users" can come up with because they're at the cutting edge of their field and wanting to go further, and another that manufacturers can come up with because they've got deep knowledge about manufacturing. If "repackaging" involves making it cheaper to produce then that's a good thing, even if it's not the cool kind of innovation that people like to celebrate.
snowwrestler 13y ago
The future of kitesurfing is apparently paragliding.
- richardburton 13y ago
  A combination of the two will be really interesting. Lou Wainman, one of the sport's biggest innovators, wants to give surfers wings. Advances in fabrics will help kite manufacturers create incredibly efficient shapes that'll allow riders to jump for much longer.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Truer than you know -- one of the paragliding pilots I've known got into it after first doing kitesurfing (and he's probably not the only one).
baddox 13y ago
I think a very similar article could be written for the RC (remote-controlled) community, specifically the rise of the multirotor (i.e. "drones": quadcopters, hexacopters, etc.). I was late to the game, so my grasp of the history isn't enough for me to write such an article, but I know this sort of thing has happened in the last several years. There are extremely active communities where people repurpose electronics designed for RC airplanes and (traditional) helicopters, flash microcontrollers to give better flight characteristics for multirotors, use Arduinos to create flight controllers and autopilot systems, etc. Even over the last 3 years all the technology has become extremely accessible. The RC community is probably the most helpful, curious, and resourceful online communities I've ever spent time with.
- morganw 13y ago
  The RC community was pretty awesome even before DIY drones/Ardupilot, helping push the quick rise of electric flight and FPV cheap video over unlicensed RF. Quadcopters wouldn't have taken off if MEMS gyros hadn't gotten cheap and easier to build with (flat Z-axis), possibly due to video game controllers and smartphones. Electric flight probably benefited from laptops then smaller portables pushing li-ion manufacturing. If you look at helicopters of a few years ago, just getting a single yaw gyro was expensive. For quadrotors, you could only get props for the counter-rotating motors in a limited selection of diameters & pitches.
BadWIllHunting 13y ago
I'm not sure I buy it

65 points by richardburton 13y ago

Internet has made a big difference for kite boarding, but I would say it has had the same effect on windsurfing recently so I don't think the comparison is necessarily correct. Rather it is the differences in the sports themselves that are making windsurfing lag behind: 1) windsurfing is much harder to learn and not as enjoyable at first (in fact it can be a pain) so people give up quicker 2) kitesurfing, for the new guy, is a lot more spectacular and gets a lot of "wows" on the beach, so it attracts more people 3) I must admit kitesurfing equipment is a lot lighter and easier to carry around 4) Windsurfing, being an older sport, has an "old" image. People generally think its slow and boring, and that you need huge waves to have fun. However things have changed drastically. Take a look at a few videos on http://www.continentseven.com http://www.continentseven.com to see what I mean

samskiter 13y ago
Side discussion- As a kitesurfer/snowboarder/skater I think can appreciate the more technical aspects of windsurfing and not just look for 'wow' factor. But what I find difficult to watch in freestyle windsurfing is the 'sinking' or 'stopping' after tricks. It seems that in order to do anything really impressive you're going to just stop after you land. I think the best looking tricks in windsurf (and all of these sports actually) are ones where you leave the tricks with (close to) speed you entered with - such as certain tricks done on waves or some of the less technical 'pop' tricks. To me the root of this problem really comes down to the size of the gear you are having to throw around. In comparison, kitesurfing really frees your body up when riding and allows you to move around more in the air, as well as providing a 'pull' from with more freedom of control than a windsurf sail.
- mstrem 13y ago
  Well actually, you can do nearly all the tricks in windsurfing without stopping and sinking and coming out of it planing... it is just incredibly difficult to do though. Even the top surfers don't manage very often
- twp 13y ago
  The developments in acrobatic paragliding follow a similar theme: it used to be you'd do trick A, then resume normal flight, then do trick B, resume normal flight, trick C, etc. Now it's all about instantaneous transitions between tricks. Pal Takats's video explains it brilliantly and impressively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9lncIP4ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9lncIP4ac Strongly recommended!
sliverstorm 13y ago
Wind surfing doesn't seem old and boring to me. I see it as the next stage in evolution after the Laser.
- GuiA 13y ago
  For those who are confused by silverstorm's statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(dinghy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(dinghy)
richardburton 13y ago
It's true that windsurfing has progressed enormously in the last 10 years. However, the sport began in the 80s before the internet was commonplace and so its development was stunted in the beginning. I should have made the graph more clear.
- randall 13y ago
  You should mention Skateboarding. Kickflips took years to catch on because people only saw Rodney Mullen in skate-shop distributed VHSes.
  - richardburton 13y ago
    That's really interesting. Although I've played around with a longboard I never got into skateboarding in a big way so I wouldn't feel qualified to write about it. Another interesting example is the Triple Cork in snowboarding: Torstein Horgmo debuted it in 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGqkq3QqRE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGqkq3QqRE And now they're expected at each X Games: http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000194812/featuresobf/two-new-triple-corks-at-2013-x-games-big-air-torstein-horgmo-wins/ http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000194812/featuresobf/tw...
    - goatforce5 13y ago
      Speaking of X Games and skateboarding... Tony Hawk's first 900 was pretty neat. He was getting close to doing it, but couldn't quite nail the landing and it was decided to let him just keep trying until he got it. Even though it was over regulation time and it took him 10 tries they awarded him first place and none of the other competitors protested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/900_(skateboarding) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/900_(skateboarding) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YYTNkAdDD8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YYTNkAdDD8
troebr 13y ago
Windsurfing also requires stronger winds. ~13/14 knots is enough to kite and jump around, and I think you need 3/4 knots to windsurf comfortably.
- BrandonMarc 13y ago
  I think you have that backwards ..

Fuzzwah 13y ago

I've recently got back into skydiving after a break of 7 years. The explosion of go pro videos, youtube and discussion forums has had a similar effect as described in this article. Combined with the ease of spreading info was the proliferation of indoor skydiving wind tunnels. Being exposed to a new idea and then being able to practice it in the tunnel for an hour with out having to make 60 skydives means the lag between innovative ideas to wide spread adoption is so remarkably short now.

Retric 13y ago
Unfortunately, I think with the more dangerous sports this progress is associated with a lot of people pushing way beyond there skill level. Skydiving is a fairly dangerious sport, but base jumping + wing suit + near terrain following is practically suicidal. It looks awesome on YouTube, but they don't give any indication of wind which is absolutely critical etc etc. Edit: youtube.com/watch?v=PPmWOA9cVM4&feature=plpp PS: Check out birdmen the original dream of flight on netflix and take note of how many times they mention dead people.
- base698 13y ago
  Yep, out of 17 BASE accidents this year 15 were in a wing suit. I didn't do a wingsuit BASE jump until I had over 200 BASE jumps and 1400 skydives. Now every new skydiver rushes to do it after a single year of experience, and the numbers show what a great idea that is.
  - base1018 13y ago
    Didn't think I'd run into a BASE jumper on Hacker News. Certainly wouldn't have thought he or she would have a BASE number as low as yours... I don't jump anymore, but I was active from 2003 to 2007ish. Curious if we've met elsewhere, online or irl... drop me an email if we did.
mrb 13y ago
Where the heck do you find an indoor skydiving wind tunnel that you can use solo for one contiguous hour?

robomartin 13y ago

A very interesting message hidden in this post is that software patents are bad for innovation. Perhaps I am stretching things a bit by going from kitesurfing to software patents. The idea popped into my mind when I read passages like these: "In the early days, there were small pockets of kiteboarders spread across the world. These pioneers didn’t work in isolation; they were able to share their ideas on sites like KiteForum.com. They posted clips of new tricks that they’d landed, improvements they’d made to their gear, safety tips, amazing new locations, and anything else they thought other kiteboarders should know." "The lag time between someone inventing a new trick and everyone else catching up is much smaller when the innovators can distribute their ideas instantly." Think about where we would be if companies didn't have to spend billions of dollars to acquire patents and, instead, invested that money towards driving true innovation.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
DEMOCRATIZING INNOVATION- by Eric Von Hippel talks about this and uses a few extreme sports (including the birth of mountain biking) as examples: http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm edit: Just checked and kitesurfing gets three mentions in the index and is the main non-software case study of chapter 7.
- tmp3098512 13y ago
  Yet the most widespread kite design today is patented and was developed secretly by two men. Nevertheless, I agree with the author that in the early days collaboration (and competition) between innovative kitesurfers drove the sport forward. Even today the innovation does not come from the main manufacturers who do nothing but repackaging last year's models.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    In the book Hippel talks about two different kinds of innovation, one which "lead users" can come up with because they're at the cutting edge of their field and wanting to go further, and another that manufacturers can come up with because they've got deep knowledge about manufacturing. If "repackaging" involves making it cheaper to produce then that's a good thing, even if it's not the cool kind of innovation that people like to celebrate.

snowwrestler 13y ago

The future of kitesurfing is apparently paragliding.

richardburton 13y ago
A combination of the two will be really interesting. Lou Wainman, one of the sport's biggest innovators, wants to give surfers wings. Advances in fabrics will help kite manufacturers create incredibly efficient shapes that'll allow riders to jump for much longer.
Wingman4l7 13y ago
Truer than you know -- one of the paragliding pilots I've known got into it after first doing kitesurfing (and he's probably not the only one).

baddox 13y ago

I think a very similar article could be written for the RC (remote-controlled) community, specifically the rise of the multirotor (i.e. "drones": quadcopters, hexacopters, etc.). I was late to the game, so my grasp of the history isn't enough for me to write such an article, but I know this sort of thing has happened in the last several years. There are extremely active communities where people repurpose electronics designed for RC airplanes and (traditional) helicopters, flash microcontrollers to give better flight characteristics for multirotors, use Arduinos to create flight controllers and autopilot systems, etc. Even over the last 3 years all the technology has become extremely accessible. The RC community is probably the most helpful, curious, and resourceful online communities I've ever spent time with.

morganw 13y ago
The RC community was pretty awesome even before DIY drones/Ardupilot, helping push the quick rise of electric flight and FPV cheap video over unlicensed RF. Quadcopters wouldn't have taken off if MEMS gyros hadn't gotten cheap and easier to build with (flat Z-axis), possibly due to video game controllers and smartphones. Electric flight probably benefited from laptops then smaller portables pushing li-ion manufacturing. If you look at helicopters of a few years ago, just getting a single yaw gyro was expensive. For quadrotors, you could only get props for the counter-rotating motors in a limited selection of diameters & pitches.

BadWIllHunting 13y ago

I'm not sure I buy it