The Thought

This morning, I was contemplating a better, cleverer vernacular name for e-bikes. For the purposes of this contemplation, e-bikes are pedal bikes, or pushbikes as they're called in the UK, with an electric motor which assists the rider. On the other hand, any bike with a throttle, I'm just gonna consider to be a motorbike.

This made me think, that in this instance, the bike is almost an extension of the human.

And I've felt for a while that riding an e-bike is a lot like having a superpower. Not a genetic or biological super power like regeneration or teleportation. So not your Spiderman, Jean Gray, or Superman style super power. No, e-bikes are like having a technological superpower like Ironman or Batman. Or, the Bionic Woman!

Which is what got me wondering, should we be calling e-bikes, bionic bikes?

I'm Ignorant

But what does "bionic" mean? I had to admit to myself that outside of the pop-culture context of machine-enhanced superhumans, I really didn't know.

I quickly searched up the Wikipedia page and read "the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology."

Huh...that's really not what I was thinking.

But then I got to reading about how bionics is practiced and the inventions that have been inspired by nature. Which led me to Velcro. And before I say more, think to yourself, what thing in nature behaves like Velcro, attaching itself (sometimes relentlessly) to some kind of fabric with little hooks?

Cleverer readers than myself may have already known this, but burs, those little hooky seed balls inspired Velcro. There are a number of other things, which you can of course read about on the page, but I found this somehow inspiring in my early morning musings.

And then I thought about what might I be looking at right this moment that might lead to some invention or technological innovation or even societal revolution. Such as now, this revolution we're living as every tech superpower tilts relentlessly toward machine learning. Which was itself, inspired by study of neurons.

Coming Full Circle

In writing this, I also finally looked up bionic in a couple of dictionaries.

From the Oxford dictionary, "having or denoting an artificial, typically electromechanical, body part or parts."

From Merriam-Webster, "having normal biological capability or performance enhanced by or as if by electronic or electromechanical devices."

So perhaps my term "bionic bike" isn't so far off, actually, from a purely lexographical perspective.

Although, since then, I've thought of a term I like even better. Inspired by Voltron, Robotech, and so many human-machine fictitious inventions of anime and manga, I think I like best: mecha-bike.

If you see me on the trails, riding by on my mecha-bike, be sure to wave.