Standardization is key to this, I think. Any device that cracks the 'fits all bicycles' electrification nut, is going to grow.
Same goes for some startup that comes up with a way to convert existing petro-cars into electro-cars, i.e. hub motors, super-capacity, etc.
It makes all the sense in the world to me that electric revolution/evolution is happening in the e-bicycle (and to some extent e-motorbike) classes of transportation.
Bicycles, generally, are an area where we have always seen how important it is to have standards...
I realise this is a different class of bike, vis a vis e-bike vs. e-motorbike, but just by way of experience I've been an avid rider of electric mopeds (Vespa, UNU) and now an electric motorbike (Bonfire X) in a European city where such devices really are the best ways to get around, given the appropriate weather conditions.
These are kind of 'traditional' moped and motorbike (scrambler) form-factor machines, but fully electric. The Bonfire X has a nice regeneration factor, so it really whines like tron if you get it lined up on the right PID slope.
The riding/getting around town experience is delightfully quiet, not necessarily super-charged (although it could be), but also nevertheless non-polluting - in the city/sphere of use - and I can only say I hope these kinds of bikes really are just the beginning of what can be done to truly make an efficient transportation system based around electric power.
Wind, hydro and solar are perfectly cromulant ways to charge ones batteries, and get around. If only we could get the component manufacture and assembly done in a way that was ecologically better than the petro-system, alas .. there is work to be done on this but I am sure I will personally within the year, wire up my electric transportation devices to a solar system, and go pretty much off-grid for charging for a few months, at least .. I will attempt to get 100k'ms worth of free ride out of the sunshine, over the next year.
If the e-bike / e-motorbike markets begin to coalesce, I can only imagine we will see extremely efficient machines on the horizon .. or in the mirror (in my case), hehe ..
Not just because I've got all of these machines in my collection, but also because the 8-bit Hub, which is a bit of hardware that allows all of these machines to get on the Internet, play multiplayer games, etc. - IS AWESOME!
Not to discourage those who want to build isomorphic translators. Just that, there are other projects of this ilk which are a step beyond ..
Just installed and am playing with this. Actually there are very few compilers of this ilk, particularly for my preferred platform on the CoCo.
In fact, I know of no BASIC compiler with a modern IDE that outputs 6809 assembly to a disk file for running on that machine. I can use old compilers that aren't supported anymore, but this is the only modern BASIC for the CoCo. I bet that's also true for many of the other platforms ugbasic support.
And considering once I'm done with my CoCo project it's very likely to work with other platforms with little to no changes, and the whole thing is open source, this is an amazing project!!
That's not necessarily true. Shipping (via ocean) of finished expensive small products is cheap and quite low carbon on a per device basis as long as you don't mind the delay. One of the reasons china is the place to manufacture is that the electronics manufacturing _inputs_ are now concentrated there, as is the know-how.
Well I'm calling bullshit on neoliberal free-trade ideology based on voodoo economics which just looks at simple measurable factors like "cost of labor" completely ignoring social cost (local unemployment, mass migration, social tensions, etc.) and ecological cost (pollution, climate crisis, etc.) which were commonly socialized (tax money) in case of a concrete crisis. Not a personal attack, sorry if it sounded like that.
The music industry has just as big a headache with imposter syndrome, the Flynn factor, and the Peter principle, as any other industry.
The issue is that the music industry is extremely exploitative, while being undeniably competitive. You don't get coders going to the extremes that members do, for their art. (Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, personally.)
>producers and artists making content that isn’t of the highest quality, but at the end of the day they are creating. Setting an unreasonable bar of skill is not the way forward.
Its not skill. Its sell-ability. It doesn't matter if you threw lemons at a piezo and called it done, if someone is willing to pay to listen to it - because it interests them - then you've got a hit.
The ability to sell music is a very, very difficult thing to attain. Music is immediately free upon creation.
We, of course, have imposed a great deal of arbitrary limits on its production and reproduction and broadcast and distribution over the years - but the fact we still have musicians out there, mind-blowingly great ones in fact, who will never get discovered in their lifetimes is a clue: music is language.
It therefore cannot and should not, ever, be limited by government - or its adherents - in ways which prevent the use of this language.
If you're going to apply that argument you should apply it to everything - music, art, software, money, property of all kinds.
But you won't, because the argument always comes to down to "Stuff I want should be free because I want it. Stuff that profits me personally should have legal and moral protections unless I personally have the luxury of choosing otherwise."
That aside - it's skill too. Of a specific kind. Producers have - actually have always had - two jobs. One is the admin side of delivering the project on time and on budget - which is not as easy as it sounds when band members may be drunk, high, unreliable, on the verge of a personal or professional breakdown, or at war with each other.
The other is having the taste and instinct to hit the market just where it wants to be hit.
Taste and instinct are incredibly nebulous and hard to define, but music buyers know them when they hear them. They're the difference between a record that sounds polished and a record that somehow has a life of its own.
With respect to Albini, having an EE degree has absolutely no relevance to this. If anything it will get in the way, because EE degrees teach you nothing about taste and musicality.
Nor - unfortunately - does talent in the abstract. Some musicians are just too talented for the mainstream. In a saner culture we'd subsidise them - somehow - without relying on the middle-of-the-bell-curve markets to do something they're fundamentally unable to do.
>Some musicians are just too talented for the mainstream.
The mainstream is a limiting factor in all talent. Not just music. This is because: information wants to be free. It is the mainstream which sets those restrictions.
I have been making music for decades. Not professionally of course, but only for myself.
I think in the rush for fandom we forget that it is quite possible to be the best musician you know.
Music is one of those healing substances that will always work and doesn't require you to invest heavily or be addicted or sign a subscription. It will just heal you.
The fact that this has been industrialized and indeed weaponised in the Western world is a bit of a travesty - but we must never forget that our music schools produce 4 - 5 million new musicians a year.
This is why I say, the only rock and roll industry is the one where the guitars are being made and new instruments designed and fashioned - for us all.
The idols come and go. That old synthesizer will have a lot, lot longer use than the CD rack ..
Oh, suddenly we're not happy with giving a totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship weapons to execute genocide on tens of millions of innocent people and just really want their money for our play time..
What changed?
Edit: I mean, this isn't news and its no conspiracy theory. The USA really is in league, militarily, with a fascist totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship which regularly murders children as well as its own citizens. It deserves your attention, fellow citizens. Whether it makes you feel uncomfortable about your investments - or not.
Well that's exactly the thing. They haven't. We're talking about a group of people here who live inside scientific papers and jupyter notebooks. They're able to make machines literally think, but you'd be pushing them out of their comfort zone if you stuck them in front of something like Emacs with C. Some people like GG, Jeff Dean, etc. are strong in both skill sets, but they're outliers.
Same goes for some startup that comes up with a way to convert existing petro-cars into electro-cars, i.e. hub motors, super-capacity, etc.
It makes all the sense in the world to me that electric revolution/evolution is happening in the e-bicycle (and to some extent e-motorbike) classes of transportation.
Bicycles, generally, are an area where we have always seen how important it is to have standards...