PeteHski

Have you really not noticed how science and technology evolves and advances over time?

Scientists and engineers are employed to develop future products that are generally better than the present ones. Competition between manufacturers drives this constant need to improve. It's actually pretty rare for technology to regress, despite the odd hiccup along the way (PF BBs?)

Here is a TDF bike from the mid 1920s



1950s



1980s



2000



2010



2021



Putting aside any personal vintage nostalgia, is it not blindingly obvious to you that these bikes keep improving as time marches forward? It's genuine evolution, not just marketing of any random "new" stuff. Had I not listed the dates above, it wouldn't be very difficult to put them in the correct chronological order.

Atlas Shrugged

Thanks for the interesting post it is great to see it laid out like that. The interesting question would be which bike would you pick for your personal ride. I have actually owned a TI Raleigh as shown as well as 2010 7900 Dura Ace Tarmac and although I may have a nostalgic attachment my current S Works Roubaix is just an all around better bike.

smd4

If I had the choice to own an F4U1-D Corsair or an F/A-18, I know what I’d choose. Modern features not withstanding, I’d much rather run our 1941 steam locomotive than the diesel. Some of man’s inventions are timeless.

PeteHski

That TI Raleigh was the bike of my dreams as a kid in the 80s. I did very briefly think about buying one of the recent modern replicas, but I just couldn't imagine ever choosing to ride it over a modern bike. It would be literally an ornament for me at this point. It's the same with classic cars. I've owned plenty of them and got to a point where I just prefer driving modern cars. The difference in objective performance and reliability is now simply too big for me to enjoy the oldies like I used to.

bocobiking

Science can and does make changes in technology. But what science cannot do is create an objective value for these changes. Creating value is the domain of each individual human; value is subjective; what constitutes progress is subjective. There is no telling how a particular individual will experience these pictures; there is no telling what that individual wants in his cycling experience. The latest carbon fiber is not objectively better than a 1974 Schwinn Paramount.

smd4

The Mona Lisa was painted with obsolete paint, brushes, and techniques. Every aspect of oil painting is hyper-technically advanced today compared to when the Mona Lisa was painted. Far greater realism can be obtained today with computers.

Which is considered fine art, a cultural icon and priceless?

Rolla

a) Painting with brushes and oil is hardly obsolete.
b) Realism isn't always the goal of art, nor the criterion for greatness.
c) Priceless fine art icons often aren't recognized as such for decades or even centuries.

smd4

The composition of the oil paint and the construction of the brushes is FAR different today. The “technology” is different.

sjanzeir

And I'm not at all ashamed to say that it's about as high of a bar as I can afford right about now. So there.

smd4

better than my 1976 Honda Civic wagon with its choke and AM radio.

Does cxwrench even know what a
choke is? Never mind. He can Google it and answer maybe intelligently.

sjanzeir

My 504 does have a manual choke, too. It had been disabled by the previous owner at some point using the old tie-the-flaps-open-with-a-piece-of-wire trick, but I've already taken care of that - albeit I never needed to use it thanks to the warm weather around where I live.

Rolla

Is that why the Mona Lisa is a priceless cultural icon? Can't art made with other "technology" also achieve fine art status?

Atlas Shrugged

I am pretty sure our work is done here. By the time we are done with this thread the op’s greatest fears will have actually come true.

smd4

Guess

we’ll see!! My money’s on the Mona Lisa.

I’m taking odds.

Rolla

And I'd say we already have. There are entire museums of iconic art that was made with technology more recent than Da Vinci's. It's not the medium that determines greatness.

sjanzeir

I seriously doubt that - not when the likes of LDC, Bullseye, Bombshell, and Speedline (not to mention Paul) are still committed to making really nice (and very expensive) V-brakes and make them in America, and not when the Chinese are there to knock them off with decent quality at a fraction of the price.

rsbob 

Gee, how can you argue against that? Good for you.

tomato coupe

It's pure genius. Just avoid riding in the conditions where it makes a difference.

PeteHski

I'm trying my best to relate this analogy to rim vs disc brakes. Are you saying that despite being based on older technology, rim brakes are considered to be a priceless cultural icon? I don't even like the Mona Lisa. It's an ugly painting to my eye. Priceless only because it happened to be painted by da Vinci. If it was the work of an unknown artist it would be totally worthless. Bicycle brakes are not subjective art. They are there to perform a basic function and newer tech does that better than old tech. As I explained earlier, tech does not regress over time (at least not unless the empire that created it collapses and all past knowledge is lost).

PeteHski

If that were true then bicycle (and any other technical product) development would be a lot more random than it actually is. Individuals of a certain age might well have a sentimental preference for products of a specific era, but the newer products are objectively better. From a nostalgic point of view I do "value" iconic bikes from the 1970s an 80s (TI Raleigh for example), but I'm not going to pretend their outdated tech is on a par with their modern equivalents. Some people seem to live in denial when it comes to technological progress.

Disc brakes in general simply function better than rim brakes and that's why rim brakes are becoming obsolete. It has nothing to do with "Big bike" marketing. It's just simple engineering evolution.
So what comes after disc brakes in this evolutionary process? Is there a known wheel braking mechanism inherently better than the hydraulic disc brake and caliper? Based on what we see in the automotive industry, I would say not at this point. Certainly not in mainstream production anyway.

Sy Reene

Big bike weren't really able to sell the disc brake road bike by itself. Nobody was really flocking to them when it was en vogue to be running 23 or 25mm tires. So they pivoted, and so began the notion that we were all really uncomfortable on our bikes, and we needed wider and cushier rides running fatter tires on wider rims. This of course making rim brakes a more difficult proposition. Oh.. and the gravel bike of course, because in our heads anyway we like the notion of riding over rock-strewn paths and roadways.

Anyway, here we are. Are disc brakes better? Yes. Are they worth the tradeoffs? Yes, no, maybe. I do think disc brakes and the TL tire wave has brought more $ to the industry -- not just the makers who at the very least had a windfall benefit of having a more visibly different product that could incentivize upgrading, but also the shops -- more maintenance that isn't as easily done at home.

Jeff Neese

Yes. A comparison can be made to an audio volume control. Those are not linear potentiometers - they use what is called "audio taper". That means you have less gain at the low end, so when you turn your stereo on and start turning up the volume control, there will be less of an increase in actual volume per degree of rotation on the low end, and that proportion of change increases as you turn the volume up more. This gives you enough control to turn up the volume just a wee little bit, or increase it a lot or go to full volume, with better control. You can use a linear taper pot for a volume control but it makes it harder to have fine control over the volume. It goes from very soft to very loud with not much rotation of the volume control, so it's trickier. Yes you can still achieve the same results - "I turn the knob right, it gets louder, I turn it left, it gets softer - what's the problem?".

I did say modulation is more important for some than others. I run mostly cantilever brakes and I notice a big difference even between different makes/models, or even how I have them set up. That's one of the reasons I love cantis - because I can dial them in the way I like them. Minor changes to the straddle cable make a big difference in modulation - the ability to go from lightly feathering the brakes (just a light whisper of brake pads touching the rims) to full-on panic stop. The range between those two is what we're talking about - how wide is that range?

Also, we're not talking about lever travel - we're talking about force applied to the lever, the controlling force.

bocobiking

Not to belabor the point (but I guess I am), but I think the worship of science as objective is misplaced. One of the most famous books on the theory of science by Thomas Kuhn is The Structure of Scientific Revolutons. Here's a description of his argument:
"the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely wholly upon "objectivity" alone. Science must account for subjective perspectives as well, since all objective conclusions are ultimately founded upon the subjective conditioning/worldview of its researchers and participants."
So our idea of what is objectively valuable is occasioned by our, subjective, world view. I think I would argue that our world view includes the idea that change is progress, that complexity is better than simplicity, that world history is a linear road of everything getting better. These are subjective notions that seem like objective truth to those steeped in our world view.

In the world of cycling, the latest invention is the e-bike. Is that objective progress that everyone should now embrace, just like disc brakes? What if they invent a way to shift gears with a simple mental act with no physical movement; would that be objective progress with all previous gear-shifting mechanisms relegated to the category of nostalgia? To claim that the latest invention is objectively better seems like a rhetorical way to impose one's values on everyone else. To say that everyone else is motivated merely by nostalgia is patronizing.

WhyFi

Yeah, but saying something like, oh, I don't know, maybe "it seems to me that all the rationales for a new product are created afterward to justify our thirst for a new toy," isn't patronizing at all.

prj71

You probably own and use a few tin cans with strings and a rotary dial phone.