The humble wheel. Arguably one of mankind’s best inventions, but for humans, the “best” is just a placeholder. A temporary title we bestow while we search for something better.
One day someone thought, “wow this is great, what if we had two of them” and just like that, the bicycle was born.
I started thinking about the bike because I was getting frustrated with computers. Computers are complex, they have a lot of moving parts, and they can be really unreliable. By contrast, bicycles are simple, have few moving parts, and are bullet proof.
Steve Jobs said that the Computer should be a bicycle for the mind so to better appreciate the role computers play in my life, I needed to get on my bike.
This bike is probably 10 years old and still works perfectly. Imagine you shelf your Macbook in a shed and 8 years later you decide to start using it again. Would it still work perfectly? Probably not…
Now I know that the meaning behind this sentiment is that a bike makes human transport more efficient and effective so a bicycle of the mind should make knowledge work more efficient and effective. But you know what also gets the mind going? Riding your bike.