In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
I suppose we should be grateful any time a town installs a bicycle parking rack. And we should thank whoever donated the funds for it. Still, this one left me wondering, "What were they thinking?" A special bike parking rack was unveiled the other day, for Valentine's Day. It's red, which is appropriate enough. And I can understand the wish to use the unveiling to celebrate some aspect of the town's history. But I think there's something a bit incongruous, to say the least, about putting an image of an oil rig on the bike. Maybe I shouldn't complain too loudly. After all, cycling, like the arts, have been used to glorify or sell all sorts of things that haven't been good for the planet, or the spirit. The Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone?
I can remember when "intuitive" was an adjective used to describe someone who seemed to understand what other people felt--or just things in general--without conscious reasoning. Perhaps you have a mother, friend, partner, spouse or someone else in your life who "gets" you in that way. Or, perhaps, you can sense situations before they happen, as police officers who have spent a lot of time on the streets often can.
Somewhere along the way--in the '80's or '90's, I reckon--it became a marketing buzzword for "any idiot can use it." Like most marketing buzzwords, it is misleading if not downright deceptive. The "intuitive" product or system might have made perfect sense to whoever designed it, but that doesn't always mean it will make sense to someone who doesn't have a PhD. (I have an M.F.A.)
To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, let me tell you about most product designers (and software developers, and IT people): They are different from you and me. I have come to the conclusion that they are more interested in the complexity (or mere complicatedness) or efficiency of the machines or systems they create than in how readily people can use them. At least, I feel that way every time I try to use a current phone to, um, make or answer a call or a camera to, how can I explain this?, take a picture.
Maybe what they're trying to do is to get rubes like me to "think out of the box". You know, to forget everything we've ever learned, no matter how empirically-based it may be, and follow the "logic" of whatever they've designed. Perhaps the inventor of the QWERTY keyboard had that in mind. I guess I should be thankful to that person, and to anyone who's ever created a system in which I have to enter my students' grades under "HR/Campus Solutions" rather than under anything having to do with students, courses, grades or students' records.
At least the folks who came up with the Backwards Brain Bicycle were joking--I think:
Turn your bars right to steer left. And vice versa. Going left to go right, and going right to go left. Hmm...That sounds like the "reasoning" behind those people who say they would vote for Donald Trump (or any other Republican nominee) if the Democrats don't nominate Bernie Sanders as their presidential candidate. As for how such logic works in bicycle steering systems--well, all you have to do is look at the video!
