WJBertrand
Ventura Highway
An alternative attitude is to resolve to learn what you need to know about new technology. I’ve always been a bit of a techie anyway, in spite of being born in the early 50s. The new tech doesn’t really intimidate me, and I can’t say I long for older days, well accept for my younger, stronger body, I’d like to have that back!Like I said in an earlier post, I don't think there's even a universal definition of what a motorcycle's "fundamentals" are. I think that talking about motorcycle fundamentals is sometimes a symptom of nostalgia. It comes down to something like this: "Bikes aren't like they were when I was younger. I grew up being able to adjust my carburetor myself, and replace the points, and it was air cooled and didn't have things like radiators and water pumps. I was comfortable with that tech. I was younger, and learning things was easier. Now I'm older, and bikes are more complicated, and I'm not comfortable with things like fuel injection and fuel pumps and VVT and ABS and TFT etc. And because my comfort level with this newer technology has been exceeded, I long for the days when I had a better understanding of the technology I was using, and felt more in control of it".
Alvin Toffler called it "Future Shock", and wrote a book about it. It basically says that modern changes in society and technology occur at such an accelerated rate that it leaves people in a state of unease and disorientation. And he wrote that book back in 1970, well before the dawn of personal computers, smart phones, and worldwide connectivity.
I certainly feel it myself, probably more in the social framework than the technological, but the tech can be intimidating to someone like me that was born in the mid 60's. And nostalgia is a very pretty powerful drug, and it's pretty normal to long for the days when you were younger, and felt more like you had a handle on things. So eyeing newer technologies with suspicion and distrust is a normal reaction to future shock, and it comes out in ways like "all that newfangled tech is just something that'll break and leave you stranded". That is, at least in some people, a defense mechanism against the unease people feel about change.
I will admit to frustration with poorly designed user interfaces, but this is more a matter of execution than the technology itself.
I think a bit of technology that rarely fails, if ever, is preferable to the old school stuff that failed frequently, even if it was cheaper and simpler to fix. When I first started riding, you didn’t get very far if you weren’t at least somewhat mechanically adept. Nowadays we have riders joining the fray that don’t even know how to change their oil. Without the improvements technology brings, most would be excluded from participation.
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