Wooden bicycle

Scene 41: Hitchhiker's Guide to Scandinavia: Streckers Bar: Hans Lederflynt is chatting with the Somali cook Ghedi.

Ghedi: Herring again?

Hans: I like herring.

Ghedi: Where you been today?

Hans: Sweden for free.

Ghedi: Cheapskate. You packed a picnic and took the train to Malmo and went to all the free places.

Hans: Over the 8 kilometer Oresund Link. Beautiful technology. Actually, I went to look at a bicycle. A wooden one with a spruce frame.

Ghedi: You want to go back and live in the 19th century? Sounds heavy and fragile. A bicycle built of broomsticks? Make mine metal anyday.

Hans: Or carbon fiber. Looked nice but I passed. Inappropriate technology. Sometimes you overstate the craft too much and the technology goes weak at the knees. An Oresund bridge built of wood? 50 meters above the water? Creaky and scary!

Wood and IT

I went into a computer store today and there’s this poster of a guy sitting in an empty room ordering a fiber-optic connection.

So?

So, there’s something incongruous about this wood floor, with a view of trees out the window. So analog. Somehow I associate the digital world, high tech with, with…

Metal?

And plastic.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. No reason why electrical goods can’t have wooden cases. There are firms that have started this.

Scandinavian!

Well, as it happens, one or two are. Swedish. Those Scandinavians have a knack of starting the design process from people. And there’s an Italian maker of wooden laptops.

And engineers in other countries design from the machine end?

They sometimes get things backwards. What was it someone said about engineers? They wash their hands before going to the toilet.