1920s: Psychic Bike Locks

July 11, 2019

By AHNZ

This month in history, 90 years ago (July 1929) shows a startling scene upon the grounds of Christ’s College, Christchurch. Startling to we today.

It’s not simply the huge consumption of bicycles but the lack of security around them that gives a modern viewer pause. (And if I inspected any random High School today, in Winter, would I see this many bikes? Weird things go on up here in Auckland. Kids don’t even have coats or use umbrellas. What’s going on?)

These days we would secure against theft on the Physical Lattice¹, with a bike lock.

In 1929 the same security could be handled purely by the Social Lattice or even the Religious Lattice. It’s a different culture.

“A large number of bikes parked in the Christ’s College grounds during a inter school football match. 17 July 1929².” –Christchurch, The Way Our Ancestors Knew It, Facebook

More and more our society relies upon Physical Lattices, Legal Lattices, and State Lattices to handle our challenges. As we do so we become less and less of a society. It is a response to, and reinforcement of, our slipping Social Capital.

This is a good little case study in Lattice Theory.

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1 Lattice Theory; It’s a way of thinking about history and human nature that I haven’t formally written down yet. Idea being that there are different contexts and forces simultaneously at play that we can identify. I’ll throw the terminology around like I did for TCM (Theory of Moral Cultures) and eventually lay it all out clearly

2 Date of picture is actually 4 July 1929. Ref. below

Ref. Christchurch, The Way Our Ancestors Knew It (C,TWOAKI); Facebook

Image ref. Green and Habn, 05-07-1929; Evening Post (except theirs is not as good as this copy from C,TWOAKI)

Ref. Alexander Turnbull Library of same

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