Of Bicycles and Human Relations
The humanizing bicycle
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a colleague about why I resent some forms of technology so much–mostly because I feel that they separate us more than they bring us together. Now, I know that there is the argument that technology, especially social media, are actually creating community rather than destroying it. But I question what kind of community that is: you never see the people, you can’t hear their voices, you can’t sack-out in their living rooms and share a bowl of popcorn while watching a movie. In fact, I wonder sometimes how well we actually know people that we are linked to virtually. I mean, yeah, I know my friends that I’ve reconnected to on Facebook, I think. Or is it that I know them as they were and not so much as they are?
So anyway, I was arguing with my colleague that technology separates us from our fellow humans and is so doing, makes us somewhat less than human because we are physically isolated when we should be physically close. “Ah ha!” says she, “but technology alters our biology–it becomes part of who we are. how can that make us less than human?”
She had me there–after all, it is precisely our human brains that make us human and our brains allow us to create the technologies that we use in our everyday lives. And yet… I could not and cannot shake the feeling that technology, if not necessarily making us less than human, nevertheless separates us from something that is essentially human–direct relationships unmediated by telephones, computer keyboards, broadband signals or anything else. Unless you are riding a bicycle.
Whoa wait a minute here. A bicycle. And human relations. Huh????
Imagine how you get around and think about how that piece of technology impacts your relationships. The technology could be anything–sneakers for walking, a skateboard, a bike or a car. In all of these cases, the piece of technology affects the nature of our interactions with our environment and each other, but the less technologically advanced that piece of technology, the closer the human relationships you engage in. Take the cars and bikes as a point of comparison.
The car
Cars are tremendously useful things–they carry us great distances and allow us to schlep all sorts of things with us that we wouldn’t otherwise carry anywhere. They get us to the grocery store a mile away or our parents’ house 300 miles away. I don’t doubt their power and utility. But they fundamentally change our relationships with people. They allow us to move hundreds of miles away from mom and dad. They form a bubble around us so that we can’t hear or feel what’s going on outside–no voices of neighbors, no fresh, cool breeze or smell of flowers (well, OK, you can roll the window down and get some of this I suppose, but I’m speaking generally here). You’re in a metal bubble hurtling down the highway at high speed hoping not to run into anyone or anything and hoping that no one or nothing runs into you. You are fundamentally cut off from the interactive world outside of your car as long as you are traveling inside of it.
The Bike
Now, the bike also carries you places, and it can do so at pretty high speeds so that you hope that you won’t run into anyone or anything, but it also keeps you in the world. If it’s raining, you feel it, if the flowers smell good, you smell them. And if someone shouts and says hello you can respond. It’s easy to stop to have an impromptu chat and you can pull off the road at any time. What’s more, you have to make eye contact with others–with drivers in their cars to ensure that they see you and won’t hit you, with pedestrians to be sure they aren’t crossing in front of you, with neighbors as you smile, wave and say hello on your way by. Yes, the bike is a piece of technology that becomes a part of who we are and how we interact with the world, but it doesn’t separate us from the world like a car does, therefore it doesn’t separate us from each other like a car does. It’s harder to ride hundreds of miles from home and expect that you can easily return, so you have to think about where you want to be and with whom. I would argue that it’s a more humanizing technology than a car is.
And of course, the lower tech the travel technology, the more humanizing it is. Running shoes take us running, where we say hello to our neighbors and fellow runners as our paths cross. Walking shoes slow us down even more, giving us even more opportunities to talk to each other, look each other in the eye and be in human contact.
Yes, at the end of the day, to create technology is to be human–it is a fully human act, the result of our very biology and in turn a shaper of beings. But paradoxically, though it is human to create technology, it is somehow dehumanizing to use it. So, give me a bike over a car any day–except perhaps when it’s twenty below zero….
Then I’ll take the bus!
