In 1897, a British doctor warned the public that riding a bicycle could give you appendicitis.
Dr. Arthur Shadwell, a well respected name in medical circles at the time… added chronic dysentery and nervous exhaustion to the list.
He also claimed credit for naming a brand new medical condition…
Bicycle face
The reported symptoms were a pale complexion with flushed cheeks, drawn lips, a clenched jaw and bulging eyes.
Another British doctor, warned that vigorous cycling could leave women unable to have children.
None of it was true.
You see, the bicycle was the hot new technology of the 1890s.
Mass production had began so prices fell… shops even offered payment plans as sales soared.
Women in particular used bikes to go where they pleased without a chaperone.
Historians now argue much of the medical hysteria had less to do with health… and more to do with who was suddenly free to move around.
My favorite part of the story is the rebuttal…
In 1897, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson looked at the same "bicycle face" and offered a far simpler explanation.
The anxious expression, only showed up in beginners. And so once a rider gained confidence and learned to balance on their bike, it went away.
I think about that when I read the news about AI.
Distrust of new machines and technologies is one of our oldest human habits…
You have almost certainly lived through a version of this yourself, with a technology that looked reckless at first and ordinary a decade later.
Much of the AI commentary today is bicycle face. It's the nervous expression of people who haven't found their balance with a new machine yet.
Meanwhile, the riders who have found it are already moving.
Yesterday, I showed you C.H. Robinson. A freight broker who grew operating income 20% last quarter with fewer staff, during a freight recession.
To be fair to the worriers, some fears about new technology turn out to be right. People who worried about X-ray radiation in the early days had a point. The useful skill is telling a risk backed by evidence apart from a nervous face.
The bicycle face doctors had no evidence.
And today's AI skeptics have no excuse. The evidence is sitting in quarterly filings. Read them.
For your portfolio, the only question that matters is which companies have already found their balance, and which ones are still wobbling at the end of the driveway.
Oliver
P.S.
Ivy is getting to the point where I’ll soon be putting her on a bike for the first time.
She'll pull a proper bicycle face for about a week. Then she'll be gone, and I'll be the one looking anxious.