I’m all free of charge enterprise, and I’m leery of making any extra authorities businesses, however we might have to enact some new laws and empower some kind of heavily-armed physique to maintain the bike trade and the tech trade as far aside as potential, as a result of this will’t be good:
First we should always lastly move the FRICTION [Federal Restriction on Integrating Cycling and Technology In Our Nation] Act, then we should empower brokers from the Bureau of Wheels, Tires and Frames [WTF] to maintain tech firms away from biking firms by any means mandatory. See, we should finish this predatory conduct earlier than they begin “integrating agentic AI into bikes:”
Sure, it’s at all times about making biking extra “accessible,” isn’t it? See, the actual downside with bicycles is that they’ve at all times been too difficult:
Fortuitously, issues are a lot less complicated now:
It simply retains getting higher and higher:
And with synthetic intelligence it should solely get higher nonetheless.
Look, I understand it’s futile to rail in opposition to AI. It’s the subsequent part in our technological evolution, and it’s inevitable. Even I exploit it to generate photos resembling this one:
Although in fact it by no means works. On this case, I informed it to make me a picture of “The Time-Touring T-Shirt-Carrying Retro-Fred From The Planet Tridork Driving His Aero Bike Of Doom,” and it wasn’t even shut.
This, in fact, is the Time-Touring T-Shirt-Carrying Retro-Fred From The Planet Tridork:
Although he’ll additionally reply to “Bret.”
However simply because AI will finally determine learn how to generate correct photos and can in all probability be scripting this weblog in a matter of months, that doesn’t imply I would like it on my bikes, or that I want a good handlebar:
Do you suppose it is available in quill?
I’m going to guess it doesn’t.
Both means, you in all probability didn’t ask for “the world’s first absolutely related good handlebar.” For that matter you didn’t even ask for 31.8. However guess what? You’re getting it anyway, and it’s known as…FLITEDECK!?!
I’m sorry, WHAT?
For those who’re sufficiently old to recollect 9 pace (sounds loopy, however somebody born when Shimano launched 9-speed Dura-Ace is now nearly 30 years outdated), you recognize that Flight Deck was Shimano’s built-in cycle laptop:
[That appears to be a 10-speed version, but whatever.]
You managed it by way of slightly nubbin on the lever hood, which allowed you to toggle by means of thrilling options resembling “CLK” (that’s techn-jargon for “clock”), and naturally Campagnolo answered with its personal model, the “Ergo Mind,” which, uh, in all probability additionally had a clock:
After all, in these darkish days of male chauvinism, whereas we might have had computer systems, there was no place for knowledge on our precise handlebars, as that area was reserved for photos of scantily-clad women:
However these days are over…or possibly they’re not:
Possibly that is solely the start:
I suppose it’s secure to imagine FLITEDECK could have a “Digital Pin-Up” characteristic.
Now they will get stop and desist letters from Shimano and Cinelli.