Abstract
Shifts in media consumption and interface design permeate societal divides, including sport. In contemporary cycling, the digitalisation of drivetrain control—exemplified by electronic shifting systems such as Shimano Di2, SRAM AXS, and Campagnolo EPS—has replaced mechanical cables with software-mediated wireless protocols. These systems promise a friction-free user experience in which firmware substitutes for cables and data packets supplant tactile clicks. Yet the same digital networks that promote progress foster a resurgent nostalgia for mechanical drivetrains. This study investigates how social-media platforms, magazines, podcasts, and YouTube channels narrate the transition from analogue to digital shifting as liberation and loss. Drawing on observation and rider testimony, it maps the discursive negotiations through which cyclists position themselves vis-à-vis innovation, authenticity, and identity. Advocates emphasise heightened precision, self-calibrating accuracy, minimalist cockpits, and seamless integration with head units and training applications. Critics counter with stories of depleted batteries, proprietary lock-in, and the erosion of a craft tradition in which riders tuned each gear by hand. Nostalgia, like aesthetic appeal, is thus performative as well as rhetorical. By situating electronic shifting within a broader ecology of digital media, the poster shows that technological adoption in sport is not a linear march toward progress, but a dialectical process in which convenience co-evolves with a longing for embodied skill and material simplicity.
Presenters
Damian RiversProfessor, School of Systems Information Science, Future University Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Electronic Shifting, Cycling Nostalgia, Digital Media Discourse, Human–Machine Interface
