The Internet and Mountain Biking
In the 19th century bicycles were made by hand in local shops. At the end of the century in England, industries began to manufacture bicycles. However the local shops did not get replaced. Inexpensive bicycles were mass produced in the factories while the local shops produced hand made more expensive bicycles. The shops also did the maintenance work on bicycles. This held true throughout most of the 20th century. Shops no longer made bicycles, but their roles as vendors, maintenance specialists, and sources for after market upgrades remained. With the internet, the role of the shop has changed and diminished. It is now cheaper to purchase upgrades and parts on the internet. In addition to this there are numerous "how to" sites on the internet that give detailed instruction on how to maintain, upgrade, and build mountain bikes.
This all essentially means the development of the mountain bike as a postmodern artifact. The mountain bike made with the influence of the internet by instructions on how to make, maintain, or upgrade means a bike that is devoid of singular identification. The bike is no longer from a specific manufacturer, wiping away any identity associated with a bike. The bike becomes a manifestation of many separate components and relationships that have been established with multiple websites that contribute to the bike, similar to the ersatz being. This in itself is not postmodern and as described in The Saturated Self by Kenneth Gergen requires the individual components and relationships to be removed of their traditional contexts. The mountain bike built from a multiplicity of parts is more than the sum of the identity of its parts. There is an "identity production", dictated by the person making the bike, in which the components of different but specific purposes are constructed together into a bike that is freely defined by the maker.
The example for this is my mountain bike. Its parts consist of a commuter bike drive train, a downhill front fork, hardtail frame, and cross-country tires. I, the maker, produce the identity of the bike by my interpretation of what has been put into the bike. The identity, which I call an all-mountain bike, is not specific to any of the parts.