Modern Motorcycles Are Loaded with Tech, But Is That A Good Thing? It Depends...

Is technology ruining motorcycling, or is it making the experience better? Are there better ways to implement technology that wouldn't be so intrusive? Let's talk about it. Today I'm on my 2024 Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro. This isn't a bike review by any stretch, but I do need to tell you a little bit about the bike for context. This bike has just about every imaginable gadget. It's got heated seats. It's got heated grips. It's got a quick shifter. It's got a TFT screen that's bigger than my television. It's got advanced ABS and traction control. It's got like three power ports. It's got just about everything. It's got more technology than my car. Way more technology than my car actually. And my first thought when I started riding this bike was, does this technology make everything better or is it just a total pain in the ass? As you may or may not know, my other bike is a Scrambler 900. That thing has pretty much nothing. It's got ABS and traction control and a couple of rider modes. It has heated grips. That's thanks to a friend who gifted them to me. That's a long story. We'll talk about that someday. The other day I pretty much stripped everything off of it that wasn't essential because I decided that now that I have a pretty advanced bike, I wanted an alternative to that that was the absolute most stripped down pure experience I could have. So I took everything off the Scrambler and pretty much just put it in a bin. In thinking about my new Tiger and all of the technology it has and whether or not it actually makes the experience better or not, I sort of have to step back to a concept that I was introduced to by someone I met in my professional circle who champions the idea of something called calm technology. The idea is something like this. Technology in your day-to-day life should be there to help you and not to distract you. It shouldn't be barking at you all the time. It shouldn't be flashing messages and making noises. At its purest, calm technology is there to make your life easier without you realizing it's there. It's a pretty simple concept. When I think about how technology is applied to a modern motorcycle, I can kind of put that technology into two sort of different categories. One is assistive technology and with that I would say the quick shifter falls into that, the ABS falls into that, the traction control falls into that, and I guess you could say that the cruise control falls into that. That's the assistive technology. Then what you could consider the sort of information technology, for lack of a better way of explaining it, would be the TFT screen and everything that encompasses the TFT screen. The additional screen that I've added to this, which is this little CarPlay thing called a Chiggy, the Bluetooth connectivity and stuff like that. It's the stuff that gets your attention and to a certain point distracts you from what you're really out to do, which is just enjoy the ride. When I look at this TFT screen and I start scrolling through some of the options, which I'm not going to do right now because I'm riding, it's anything but calm technology in my eyes. There's a lot going on here. The difference between this and my Scrambler, my Scrambler has an actual physical needle that turns when you go fast. I kind of like that. It doesn't have a rev counter like that, it has a digital rev counter, but I can live with that because it's this little black and white thing that really takes up no space and doesn't really demand your attention. A display like this really demands your attention, especially when it decides to tell you you have a low rear tire, when you really don't, and then you pull off to the side of the road and almost kill yourself in the process because you think you have a flat. It's a whole different story for a whole different video. So when I talk about technology, I come at it from the point of view as someone who I consider a technologist at heart. My career is built around technology. I build technology for a living. I am in no way afraid of technology. I in no way dislike technology. I love technology. What I don't like is intrusive technology. Intrusive technology to me is nothing more than information overload and assistants doing things you don't really need assistants doing. You could argue that a quick shifter falls directly into the category of assistive technology that if you're an able-bodied person, you don't really need. A modern motorcycle like the Tiger 900 has a lot of technology that one could say helps you be a better rider. It could also be said that it makes you a worse rider. I guess it depends on how you use it or don't use it. A couple of examples of technology that I find assistive and actually help me be a better rider are the cruise control and the quick shifter. The cruise control allows me to take my hands off the bars a little bit, which I don't recommend. I'm not saying you should do that. But for me, with my carpal tunnel syndrome, I really do have to spend a lot of time sort of stretching out and getting the feeling back in my hands. And so the cruise control allows me to set the speed and sort of not have to concentrate on that and more concentrate on making sure that I can feel my hands. So that's a good thing. The quick shifter in much the same way allows me not to have to use my clutch hand so much. And that's a good thing because if I am on a very, very long ride and I'm clutching all day, all night, when I get home in the middle of the night, I'll wake up with huge pains in my arm from doing that all day. Now I don't have to really worry about that. On the other hand, the technology that's built into this motorcycle that's more on the sort of information technology side, the TFT screen, the Bluetooth, stuff like that, those things can become a major distraction. One of the reasons they become a major distraction is because they don't work all that great. The Bluetooth on this motorcycle is so far a huge disappointment. I'm having trouble with navigation. I'm having trouble syncing the bike to my thing and my phone and all this stuff. And the music cuts out if I'm listening to music, the navigation cuts out if I'm navigating. It's all just a huge distraction that I don't need. Sometimes I think motorcycle manufacturers are taking every piece of technology that they can find, cramming them onto motorcycles, whether they work well or not, and using that as a marketing ploy to get you to come in and look at their latest bikes with all their latest features, and ride home with some $26,000 machine that doesn't do the goddamn thing it's supposed to, which is be reliable, safe, and fun. Truth be told, I think technology has its place, and I think its place is on a bike like this because the technology on a bike like this is purpose-built for the motorcycle's actual mission, which is to tour and adventure. Now, you can absolutely 100% tour and adventure on a stripped-down bike like the Scrambler. I know because I have, and it's a total blast. I love every second of it. But when it comes time to do a trip like my June 2025 trip across the country, I personally prefer to have some of the technology the Scrambler doesn't have to make that trip a little bit more enjoyable and a little bit easier on me as an older rider. The reason I now own two motorcycles is becoming more and more apparent to me as the days go on. On a day like this when I want to cover a whole bunch of miles and go see some stuff that I haven't seen and not worry about whether or not I'm going to be comfortable or not, the Tiger is perfect. It's got all of the modern amenities that you could possibly want, and it just makes me happy. But I have to admit, there are a lot of times when I have zero use for any of the technology on this motorcycle, and being able to climb on my Scrambler and just go twist the throttle, hear the exhaust, shift manually, not worry about cruise control and heated seats and quick shifters, it's liberating. It's sometimes completely liberating to walk away from the technology and just have a pure experience like you get on something like a Scrambler. I wouldn't give that bike up for the world, and if you made me choose today which bike I could have for the rest of my life, and if I could only have one, it would be that Scrambler. 100% no questions asked. I'm lucky and fortunate and privileged enough to be able to afford two motorcycles at this point in my life, and so I feel like having one motorcycle that's completely stripped down and pretty much bare, and one motorcycle that has all the bells and whistles, is sort of the perfect situation. Both bikes I could take anywhere in the world probably if I really wanted to, but each bike has its own sort of character and personality and a right use case. It's cold today, well it's 66, but you know it's the end of the summer so let's just call it cold, and I'm climbing and it's probably going to get into the 50s at some point along this ride. Having the heated grips and the heated seat just make me want to ride and ride and ride. On a beautiful day when the sun is out and people are out having fun and stuff like that, climbing on the Scrambler and just roaring down the street with the pipes blazing and I don't know, there's just something about it that technology will never be able to fill. And so the original question, the premise of this video is, is technology ruining motorcycles? My answer would be yes and no. Technology may be ruining the classic experience of riding motorcycles that we're all used to when we were young. That climb aboard, jump on the Kickstarter and get it moving down the road and bring an extra spark plug. With modern motorcycles those days are over. You may be sad about that, you may be happy about that. I kind of go both ways. But if it comes to the point where my entire experience in riding a motorcycle relies on the technology, then it's either time to sell the motorcycle or find something else to do. What do you think about technology on modern motorcycles? Is it going too far? Does it have a ways to go? Or is it just about right? Are there things that you wish your motorcycle had that are available out on the market with other motorcycles? Or are there things on your motorcycle that you wish were gone forever? Let me know what you think about technology and motorcycles in the comments and we can have a conversation about it. I'll catch you on the next one.