Originally Posted by
Dave Mayer
...To summarize, you've indicated that old things automatically are less functional or than new.
No. I'm saying that old things are simply old things. There is a certain type of thinking that extols the virtue of old things over new things. The logic is constructed by cherry picking certain attributes that old things have that new things don't (or have less of) and declaring these cherry picked attributes to be the all important indicators of "progress".
Real progress:
- Brifters (integrated brake/shift levers)
- Dual pivot rim brakes
- Carbon
- Cassette hubs
- 8+ speed internal gear hub systems
- Compact road drivetrains
Marketing crap:
- Compact (sloping top tube) road framesets
- Disc brakes for the road
- [Expanded gear clusters] (modified to avoid the emotionally charged language of this single list item)
List out, specifically, why you believe the six items in the "real progress" list belong there and why the others belong in the "marketing crap" list. After all, there are modernists who will find important advances in each of your three "marketing crap" items, and there are retrogrouches who will find issues will each and every item on your "real progress" list.
For instance:
- compact frames brought carbon frames to the masses; making three or four size frames makes carbon (listed in your "real progress" list) cost effective to mass produce.
- Commuters and all us here in the PNW tend to like road disc brakes. Rims are expensive and time consuming to replace.
- 10 speed gave us the ubiquitous 12-25 cassette with the 16 cog; pretty nice all purpose gear cluster. The more aged group of baby boomer cycling enthusiasts are enjoying the addition of the 27 tooth cog without sacrifice when 11 speed came out a couple years ago.
On the other side of things:
- people argue endlessly about brifters. I mean, the lack of halfway decent entry level road bikes in the $500-$1000 range is wholly due to brifters, which after almost 25 years have failed to come down much in price.
- Dual pivot brakes are a wash; roadies have never really used brakes much and the single pivots weren't that bad anyway. If anything, the advance in rim braking belongs to brake pad compounds more than anything.
- Go to the commuter forum and mention carbon, I dare you.
- You like cassette hubs but not too many gears and you think 8+ internal gear hubs, which no recreational fitness cyclist uses, is a "real progress"?
- Compact road drivetrains used to be called "touring cranks" and they have been around ever since multi-ring cranksets were invented.
My argument is all these groupings of technologies into "real progress" and "marketing crap" are all arbitrary. Go ahead. Show me a consistent system I can use to group the next new technology that doesn't involve your particular collection of bikes or what era you, in particular, were born to.
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Cat 2 Track, Cat 3 Road.
"If you’re new enough [to racing] that you would ask such question, then i would hazard a guess that if you just made up a workout that sounded hard to do, and did it, you’d probably get faster." --
the tiniest sprinter