It has come to my attention that some folks still have not seen the term "acoustic bike" (as in, not an ebike) and in case that's you, today is your lucky day
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Zappa (especially in his early years) was similar to Cage in that he could start avant-garde "what is music?" conversations in an accessible way just by virtue of doing so playfully
I've been seeing new uses of "analog" too:
• "analog emoji" for "emoticon" (YouTuber Matt Rose says this all the time)
• "analog music" for "recorded music with only instruments, with no synths or audible electronic production" (I suspect the person who said this has no idea analog synths exist)
Dammit--now I'll have to explain the "three-speed with five gears" in my bio.
Back in the day, any bike with upright bars and a fat rear hub was assumed to be a three-speed. The presence of only a rear derailleur meant a bike with five gears. My bike had both.
Oh, fascinating! More recently, Reynaliz Herrera had a percussion group in Boston called Ideas Not Theories that was sort of “STOMP with bicycles”: https://www.ideasnottheories.com
“Acoustic bike” makes me think acoustic means not electric, but listing it with “acoustic typewriter” makes me think acoustic means loud clackity-clack of a card in the spokes
Success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan. TBH I Can't recall if I spontaneously created it, heard it from @nzdodo.bsky.social or somewhere else - but will confess to enthusiastically propagating it.
I was going to say "at least it's not 'analog'" but then realized a pedal bicycle *can* be considered an analog computer, multiplying the crank rotation by a factor and expressing it as a distance.
The point is you can’t have an arbitrary real number for the gear ratio, only a rational. You can approximate any real ratio arbitrarily closely with sufficiently fine gears, but not exactly.
But yes, the gear motion is continuous if that’s what you mean.
The writer is probably familiar with guitars, and thinks that acoustic guitar is the opposite of electric guitar, and therefore acoustic is the opposite of electric.
I was very confused to find out that a virgin screwdriver is not in fact a hilarious way of asking for just orange juice, but apparently an actual mocktail.
I think it works in part because the acoustic guitar is ultimately muscle powered - it's nicely engineered to make the most of that mechanical input, but all guitars are "acoustic" at some level.
As someone who doesn't like ebikes, I gotta say I like the term 'acoustic bike' even less.
It makes no sense.
Clearly, it's derived from electric and acoustic guitars, but the problem is that both 'electric guitar' and 'electric bike' are badly chosen names to begin with. →
It's an *amplified* guitar, and a *motor assisted* bike. That's what defines them.
The electricity involved is just a means to an end.
Calling a bike acoustic just applies that same faulty logic.
Also, the onus of differentiating itself from what was already there lies on the newcomer.
Like many commenters already mentioned, we don't give existing products a weird new name just because a new version now exists.
We don't say acoustic car, acoustic toothbrush or acoustic camera. →
We do often give existing products new names when new ones come about, as in snail mail, landline phone, acoustic guitar itself
Acoustic bike is definitely jocular and may not become the serious word for the item, but the phenomenon is well known as a retronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retronym
I'd never heard of the word retronym, thanks for that.
Retronym actually is a nice word 🙃
I'll even admit that you have a point that retronyms are sometimes needed. But I insist that 'acoustic' makes no sense for a bicycle.
I vote we pull a reverse Uno card on the acoustic bike people and instead opt to return to the original term of "safety bicycle." I'm sure the e-bike stans will love the insinuation that their favourite mode isn't. 😜
i get that this is likely a joke but in case anyone is actually doing this unironically... if you really wanna label traditional bicycles as non-electric, analog would be the term. acoustic would only be for sound
It's absolutely true, riding with large groups of mountain bikers almost every weekend and you'll hear them call non e-bike shit like acoustic or 'real mans bike,' etc. No one seems to agree on what to call it as ebikes become more common.
Nothing, really. It’s supposed to be a funny extension of the acoustic–electric pair in musical instruments (i.e. acoustic guitar vs. electric guitar).
I wrote a book about it if you fancy! Lots about how people use emoji and punctuation to convey gesture and tone of voice in messages, and more https://gretchenmcculloch.com/book
Comments
https://sonicbikes.net/sonic-bike/
• "analog emoji" for "emoticon" (YouTuber Matt Rose says this all the time)
• "analog music" for "recorded music with only instruments, with no synths or audible electronic production" (I suspect the person who said this has no idea analog synths exist)
a mohair suit
you know I read it in a magazine
- 27th reminder from the dentist to get my teeth cleaned
https://youtu.be/O5TFTbT5eEM
It breaks my brain in the most delightful way
Back in the day, any bike with upright bars and a fat rear hub was assumed to be a three-speed. The presence of only a rear derailleur meant a bike with five gears. My bike had both.
https://youtu.be/jzwMjOl8Iyo?si=vVotaVsqrAWuu6kl
Like, really bad.
I might start sending letters again, just to show off my nerd skills!
And pedal doesn't differentiate when many ebikes are pedal-assist
Kinetic?
...myolitic? (As in muscle-powered?)
Or just unassisted?
"Don't you mean audio books?"
"No."
It’s a cool math problem to find gear ratios that closely approximate an irrational number, like 355/113 for pi.
But yes, the gear motion is continuous if that’s what you mean.
"Nah, just had to do some math."
Crazy.
It makes no sense.
Clearly, it's derived from electric and acoustic guitars, but the problem is that both 'electric guitar' and 'electric bike' are badly chosen names to begin with. →
The electricity involved is just a means to an end.
Calling a bike acoustic just applies that same faulty logic.
If anything, it should be 'analogue'. →
Like many commenters already mentioned, we don't give existing products a weird new name just because a new version now exists.
We don't say acoustic car, acoustic toothbrush or acoustic camera. →
Acoustic bike is definitely jocular and may not become the serious word for the item, but the phenomenon is well known as a retronym
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retronym
Retronym actually is a nice word 🙃
I'll even admit that you have a point that retronyms are sometimes needed. But I insist that 'acoustic' makes no sense for a bicycle.
Anyway, it's getting late. Time for bed and a few pages of my acoustic book.
Ben, remembering when people were KILLED from electrocution, not just hurt.
used any e-bikes i have just seen people on them without using the pedals. e-bike vs h-bike (for human driven)?
I suppose that it involves solving the conundrum among Internet users about how the whole 'there, their, they're' thing works.
...or perhaps why idiots use 'U' instead of 'you' in SMS.
https://gretchenmcculloch.com/book