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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

Jobs came for a different era too. An era where things where more scarce due to pre-internet structures. It might have been difficult for him to think '1000 songs in your pocket' would end up as an generalized addictive stream of pages and sucking peoples attention instead of helping good human contact.

It's always the same butterfly effect, when you put something in the world, it might really succeed at that but you never know how the system will grow around it. Kinda like this static1.squarespace.com/static/527deb7fe4b009d7ee74d609/t/54f93e21e4b025c50f0e090c/1425620525003/avoiding_pain_desire_path.jpg (well far fetched analogy tbh)

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Your link doesn’t seem to point to anything.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/527deb7fe4b009d7e...

pretty sure that extra path was carved for/by bicycles

That’s the Netherlands if I’m not mistaken. The stairs have a well for bike wheels on either side, so people went out of their way to make a new path that wasn’t as steep.

i don't see anything there that accommodates bikes. and in either case it would not be an example of GP's point.

if someone gave me a fork to eat soup with, then i would invent the spoon because the fork is inadequate for that purpose; not because forks had some unforeseen spoon ecosystems grow around them. if doctors started using forks as medical instruments, then sure.

The track is there. I can see it in the photo. I was just providing context, I don’t really have any stake in this conversation.

The dirt path is obvious to us, but you also described a "well for bike wheels on either side", which neither I nor GP can see any evidence for.

It’s right here:

https://simplymagicaltravlers.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/im...

That looks like a raised section of concrete to hold the dirt back from falling onto the steps, and too close to the handrails for bikes to use - your leg and the bike pedal would be hitting it. The bush at the top is also overlapping it, so there's no way to get onto it in the first place...

Yeah, maybe the pic is distorded and it's narrower than it is in real life but to me, unless you're an experienced biker .. no one will attempt going down on a thin concrete strip like that.

Oh. Lol. Yeah, you don’t ride your bike on it. You get off your bike and put the bike in the groove there. Then, you walk up the stairs using your bike’s breaks as needed while pushing/pulling the bike up/down the stairs. The bike’s wheels fit in the groove so the wheels spin easily while traversing the stairs. It’s a very common thing here.

Ohh I thought it was a quick path to avoid walking altogether. Ok now it make sense somehow.

That's plausible, I just wanted a nice set of stairs with an improvised path.

There are tons of them that aren't for bikes.

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