In the mid 1980s, the church I served purchased a television set and a video playback machine so that we could show movies at youth events and use videos in our church school. It is hard to remember just how little we knew about the entire process. We did not know about licensing and the distinction between having permission to show a movie in a home setting vs showing one in a public setting, We knew that there were stores that rented movies and that there were some movie titles that we wanted to show. At first our desire for movies was primarily entertainment. We frequently gathered groups of youth in our church for rallies and lock-ins and while the events featured worship and religious programming, having an extended time with teens meant needing to plan supervised activities to fill the time they were together. Showing a movie made supervision simple. The youth could be gathered in a room around a television set and we knew where they were and what they were doing for two hours. We could choose the movie. We used the motion picture industry rating standards, selecting movies with a G rating for general audiences. I used to tell the youth that if the movie rating required parental guidance then they needed to bring their parents to the youth rally. It was a joke in a way, but it demonstrated my nervousness about selecting movies that might offend parents.

After receiving approval from the church for the purchase of the television and the player, we were faced with a decision about what video format to choose. We had members who were proponents of Betamax, a format that offered superior audio and video quality. Looking back, I think that the quality argument was a bit silly since we had a home television set with small speakers and low resolution. I remember that another argument for Betamax was that the tapes were smaller. Space for storing tapes also was not an issue as we never collected a library of tapes. We rented tapes for occasional use.

The Betamax player that we got was quickly replaced with a VHS player because the differences in licensing meant that there were many more movies available in VHS format. Christian education videos weren’t available in Betamax format.

The debate seems silly today with movies being streamed over the internet. Youth have access to movies on their personal devices. They have home theaters with screens that are bigger than most churches and sound systems that reproduce theater quality. Movies are far less likely to entertain youth and youth events do well to plan other activities. Many churches are now offering youth retreats with digital detox, when they take a break from their devices.

I was thinking about VHS and Betamax in an entirely different context the other day. I have an electric bicycle. I purchased a used bike last year and have really enjoyed it. I’ve ridden nearly 3.000 miles on it. When the bicycle needed repairs, I ended up purchasing a second bike by the same manufacturer to use as a backup. Initially I thought I might use the second bike as a parts bike. The price I paid was less than the cost of a battery and I got two batteries with the second bike. However, I have ended up fixing up both bikes. I need to sell one, but I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. The luxury of my current situation is that I have an extra battery. If I forget to plug in my bike to charge, I can swap batteries and go. I charge my bike at home. Our home has solar panels that produce more electricity than we consume so it doesn’t cost me money to charge.

The connection with the VHS/Betamax argument is that I’m pretty sure that I have purchased a bike with a non-standard battery. More and more electric bikes are adopting batteries that can be switched between brands. My bikes have batteries that are not the same size as the ones in most other e-bikes. I believe that one battery size and style will eventually emerge to power most bikes and it is probably not going to be the one my bikes use. Like those stuck with betamax players in a VHS world, my bikes will eventually become obsolete because the cost of batteries will exceed the value of the bike. That may have already happened as when I bought the second bike, I was able to purchase a whole bike for less than the cost of a battery.

I think that swappable batteries is going to become part of the future of electric bikes. In countries where the electric grid is weak, solar charging stations can be set up where bike riders can swap batteries and keep going even if they don’t have access to charging at their homes. The electric bikes can be used to charge the batteries of small devices such as cell phones overnight when the solar stations are not producing electricity. In countries such as Rwanda, where there are large numbers of motorbikes but limited access to grid electricity, electric bikes and battery swap programs offer mobility to hundreds of thousands of people without the air pollution and carbon emissions of gasoline powered bikes. The government of Rwanda has a plan to convert over 100,000 gas powered motorbikes to electric bikes.

Obviously I don’t live in Rwanda. I have the capacity to charge my bike batteries at home without cost. I have a spare battery so I can swap batteries on the rare occasion when I want to ride more than the 35 miles my bike’s battery provides. Swapping batteries also provides a solution for times when I forget to plug my bike into the charger after a ride, which is far more common than high mileage days.

New technologies often require time for standards to emerge. VHS and Betamax existed side by side for more than a decade before VHS became dominant. Video tapes existed side by side with DVD technology before DVDs became dominant. Many homes no longer have machines for video playback because digital streaming is becoming the dominant form of video distribution. Predicting the format of technologies in the future is not a skill I possess.

For now, I’m riding my bike and enjoying it. One day I’ll likely be faced with the need to buy a new battery and have to decide how long I want to sustain the old technology. I hope that is several years from now, but as was the case with video, I’m not counting on my ability to choose the right path.