A little while ago, my gym brought in these three new stationary bikes. Expresso bikes. They do that every now and then; bring in some new cardio equipment, presumably to try and get people to actually work on their cardio instead of doing the age-old practice of bogarting elliptical machines for 30 minutes and calling it an adequate workout.
At first glance, they don’t look like anything special, they look like some fairly standard, nondescript exercise bicycles – except that they have a screen affixed to the front of them. Obviously, with the constantly advancing rise of the digital world we live in, it’s no shocker to see screens ending up on bicycles, when there are already screens attached to various other bicycles, treadmills and elliptical machines; distraction is the key to long cardio sessions, and if screens can provide some distractions, then maybe some fat sweaty Atlantic City sweat hogs might actually lose some weight.
But it’s not television that these screens broadcast; users have the option on what they want to have broadcast between different settings of paths, some interactive studio training, or interactive games that can be played while bicycling, utilizing your own cycling as the controller.
Honestly, I’m intrigued by these Expresso bikes, and if I weren’t always in the mindset that running is really the only acceptable form of cardio, I’d be willing to give these a try. Frankly, I’m under the belief that gamification is an effective way of teaching and training, and if making an exercise bike more fun by adding games or creating competition is going to be what it takes for some people to get up and exercise, I think it’s pretty cool.
However, there’s something about the Expresso bikes in particular that reminds me of that Black Mirror episode, Fifteen Million Merits. The one where it’s the dystopian future where for no real given reason, all people are required to be cycling day all the time to power lord knows what. And in order to help placate them into their tireless and endless mundane fates, while they bike, they have all sorts of digital means to distract them, including games, television, as well as simple basic scenery to help numb their brains into continuing to pedal while not realizing it.
Almost literally, the Expresso bikes have the same scenery function and game function that the, for lack of a better term, bike slaves from Fifteen Million Merits do. The only real difference is that riding an Expresso doesn’t net riders any digital currency that they can use to buy superficial imaginary shit for an avatar, but the purpose of such modes are basically the same impetus.
Ultimately, this isn’t to say that the existence of Expresso bikes means the world is headed towards a dystopian future, where all of humankind will be forced to pedal for their lives; frankly as far as Black Mirror plots are concerned, Fifteen Million Merits is kind of tame, and more ironic than anything else. But it’s just funny the parallels between Fifteen Million Merits and Expresso bikes, and it just goes to further feed the narrative of how often Black Mirror plots tend to be eerily close to reality in some ways shapes or fashions.
