

How the Internet affected kiteboarding - richardburton
http://blog.rb.cm/how-the-internet-affected-kiteboarding

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Fuzzwah
I've recently got back into skydiving after a break of 7 years. The explosion
of go pro videos, youtube and discussion forums has had a similar effect as
described in this article.

Combined with the ease of spreading info was the proliferation of indoor
skydiving wind tunnels. Being exposed to a new idea and then being able to
practice it in the tunnel for an hour with out having to make 60 skydives
means the lag between innovative ideas to wide spread adoption is so
remarkably short now.

~~~
Retric
Unfortunately, I think with the more dangerous sports this progress is
associated with a lot of people pushing way beyond there skill level.
Skydiving is a fairly dangerious sport, but base jumping + wing suit + near
terrain following is practically suicidal. It looks awesome on YouTube, but
they don't give any indication of wind which is absolutely critical etc etc.

Edit: youtube.com/watch?v=PPmWOA9cVM4&feature=plpp

PS: Check out birdmen the original dream of flight on netflix and take note of
how many times they mention dead people.

~~~
base698
Yep, out of 17 BASE accidents this year 15 were in a wing suit. I didn't do a
wingsuit BASE jump until I had over 200 BASE jumps and 1400 skydives. Now
every new skydiver rushes to do it after a single year of experience, and the
numbers show what a great idea that is.

~~~
base1018
Didn't think I'd run into a BASE jumper on Hacker News. Certainly wouldn't
have thought he or she would have a BASE number as low as yours...

I don't jump anymore, but I was active from 2003 to 2007ish. Curious if we've
met elsewhere, online or irl... drop me an email if we did.

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mstrem
Internet has made a big difference for kite boarding, but I would say it has
had the same effect on windsurfing recently so I don't think the comparison is
necessarily correct. Rather it is the differences in the sports themselves
that are making windsurfing lag behind:

1) windsurfing is much harder to learn and not as enjoyable at first (in fact
it can be a pain) so people give up quicker

2) kitesurfing, for the new guy, is a lot more spectacular and gets a lot of
"wows" on the beach, so it attracts more people

3) I must admit kitesurfing equipment is a lot lighter and easier to carry
around

4) Windsurfing, being an older sport, has an "old" image. People generally
think its slow and boring, and that you need huge waves to have fun. However
things have changed drastically. Take a look at a few videos on
[http://www.continentseven.com](http://www.continentseven.com) to see what I
mean

~~~
samskiter
Side discussion- As a kitesurfer/snowboarder/skater I think can appreciate the
more technical aspects of windsurfing and not just look for 'wow' factor. But
what I find difficult to watch in freestyle windsurfing is the 'sinking' or
'stopping' after tricks. It seems that in order to do anything really
impressive you're going to just stop after you land. I think the best looking
tricks in windsurf (and all of these sports actually) are ones where you leave
the tricks with (close to) speed you entered with - such as certain tricks
done on waves or some of the less technical 'pop' tricks. To me the root of
this problem really comes down to the size of the gear you are having to throw
around. In comparison, kitesurfing really frees your body up when riding and
allows you to move around more in the air, as well as providing a 'pull' from
with more freedom of control than a windsurf sail.

~~~
twp
The developments in acrobatic paragliding follow a similar theme: it used to
be you'd do trick A, then resume normal flight, then do trick B, resume normal
flight, trick C, etc.

Now it's all about instantaneous transitions between tricks. Pal Takats's
video explains it brilliantly and impressively:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9lncIP4ac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9lncIP4ac)

Strongly recommended!

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baddox
I think a very similar article could be written for the RC (remote-controlled)
community, specifically the rise of the multirotor (i.e. "drones":
quadcopters, hexacopters, etc.). I was late to the game, so my grasp of the
history isn't enough for me to write such an article, but I know this sort of
thing has happened in the last several years. There are extremely active
communities where people repurpose electronics designed for RC airplanes and
(traditional) helicopters, flash microcontrollers to give better flight
characteristics for multirotors, use Arduinos to create flight controllers and
autopilot systems, etc. Even over the last 3 years all the technology has
become extremely accessible. The RC community is probably the most helpful,
curious, and resourceful online communities I've ever spent time with.

~~~
morganw
The RC community was pretty awesome even before DIY drones/Ardupilot, helping
push the quick rise of electric flight and FPV cheap video over unlicensed RF.

Quadcopters wouldn't have taken off if MEMS gyros hadn't gotten cheap and
easier to build with (flat Z-axis), possibly due to video game controllers and
smartphones. Electric flight probably benefited from laptops then smaller
portables pushing li-ion manufacturing.

If you look at helicopters of a few years ago, just getting a single yaw gyro
was expensive.

For quadrotors, you could only get props for the counter-rotating motors in a
limited selection of diameters & pitches.

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snowwrestler
The future of kitesurfing is apparently paragliding.

~~~
richardburton
A combination of the two will be really interesting. Lou Wainman, one of the
sport's biggest innovators, wants to give surfers wings. Advances in fabrics
will help kite manufacturers create incredibly efficient shapes that'll allow
riders to jump for much longer.

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robomartin
A very interesting message hidden in this post is that software patents are
bad for innovation. Perhaps I am stretching things a bit by going from
kitesurfing to software patents. The idea popped into my mind when I read
passages like these:

"In the early days, there were small pockets of kiteboarders spread across the
world. These pioneers didn’t work in isolation; they were able to share their
ideas on sites like KiteForum.com. They posted clips of new tricks that they’d
landed, improvements they’d made to their gear, safety tips, amazing new
locations, and anything else they thought other kiteboarders should know."

"The lag time between someone inventing a new trick and everyone else catching
up is much smaller when the innovators can distribute their ideas instantly."

Think about where we would be if companies didn't have to spend billions of
dollars to acquire patents and, instead, invested that money towards driving
true innovation.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
DEMOCRATIZING INNOVATION- by Eric Von Hippel talks about this and uses a few
extreme sports (including the birth of mountain biking) as examples:

[http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm](http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm)

edit: Just checked and kitesurfing gets three mentions in the index and is the
main non-software case study of chapter 7.

~~~
tmp3098512
Yet the most widespread kite design today is patented and was developed
secretly by two men.

Nevertheless, I agree with the author that in the early days collaboration
(and competition) between innovative kitesurfers drove the sport forward. Even
today the innovation does not come from the main manufacturers who do nothing
but repackaging last year's models.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
In the book Hippel talks about two different kinds of innovation, one which
"lead users" can come up with because they're at the cutting edge of their
field and wanting to go further, and another that manufacturers can come up
with because they've got deep knowledge about manufacturing. If "repackaging"
involves making it cheaper to produce then that's a good thing, even if it's
not the cool kind of innovation that people like to celebrate.

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BadWIllHunting
I'm not sure I buy it

