I want to ride my bi(o)cyle

According to the authors of Exploring the Way Life Works, there are sixteen known patterns that nature uses to create and sustain life. They are:

1) Life builds from the bottom up
2) Life assembles itself into chains
3) Life needs an inside and an outside
4) Life uses a few themes to generate many variations
5) Life organizes with information
6) Life encourages variety by recombining information
7) Life creates with mistakes
8) Life occurs in water
9) Life runs on sugar
10) Life work in cycles
11) Life recycles everything it uses
12) Life maintains itself by turnover
13) Life tends to optimize rather than maximize
14) Life is opportunistic
15) Life competes within a cooperative framework
16) Life is interconnected and interdependent

The purpose of a Bioneer (one who looks to nature for inspiration) is to improve upon existing products and services by mimicking the natural patterns explained above. As an apprentice to this profession my task this week is to take a common design (something I have a general familiarity with) and analyze how the subject either meets or does not meet the proven patterns that commonly exist in our environment.

I really like my bike. I've spent the last two weeks replacing old parts and tuning up the components to get ready for the season. Check her out:


... gosh she's pretty.

On a spectrum of sustainable lifestyles the bike is generally accepted as a quality means of transportation. It doesn't produce CO2 and it uses less raw material to manufacture than most other mainstream forms of transportation. But how does this device match up to other more biological forms of movement? How does it either imitate or ignore the common patterns that exist all around us?

One pattern of biology that exists on my bike is the chain. From the book:

Chains are made of simple units connected together in long, flexible strands.

Sounds a lot like a bike chain, right?


My bike chain is a loop of interconnected units which captures energy produced by my legs and transfers that energy to the rotation of my wheels. Without the chain the bike wouldn't move. In biological terms, this chain is considered a working chain (it carries out the business of function).

In biology there is another form of chain that is much more complex - the information chain. In the human body, information chains and working chains work together to create and sustain life. From the book:

Information chains provide the genetic prescription or recipe that is translated into working chains; these in turn make it possible to copy the information chains so they may be passed on to the next generation.

My bike chain doesn't carry any information... it's inflexible and is designed to perform the most basic function of a chain - to pass on energy.

But what if it could respond to information? What if the chain "knew" when to switch gears (or adapt) without me adjusting the shifters on my handlebars? Biological chains are flexible and transmit information. In biological chains the individual units vary in shape and function. Perhaps there is a way to apply these attributes (flexibility and adaption) to a bike chain to increase its performance.

Trek may be on the right path with it's auto-shifting Lime bike;


...but this design depends on additional component parts, including mini sensors, that violate other patterns consistent in nature (namely pattern number 11 - Life recycles everything it uses).

Patterns found in nature are already being incorporate into bikes. Beyond using chains, bikes leverage these other patterns:

4) Life uses a few themes to generate many variations
10) Life work in cycles
13) Life tends to optimize rather than maximize

In the future, I would expect major innovation in the industry to come from leveraging other patterns that are not currently being incorporated in the design of most bikes. Namely:

11) Life recycles everything it uses
12) Life maintains itself by turnover