A Motorcycle Is a Thing, Not a Device

A Janus motorcycle is a comprehensible, mechanical object, functioning according to the laws of physics and capable of being felt, understood, repaired, and maintained by its rider. It is not an unrepairable “device” with unintelligible terms of use, operating system updates, or opaque algorithms shepherding the “user” along a bureaucratically sanctioned route of efficiency and planned obsolescence. When you climb on a motorcycle you are not a “user”, but an individual piloting a thing that can be understood and maintained (often across generations).

While “things” draw us into the world, “devices” serve as portals out of the world to a removed and optimized virtual realm championed in the name of safety, convenience, and efficiency. Take for example, the modern car, which is becoming more and more like the “smart” devices that quite literally direct our path, concealing behind their glossy, glowing screens a labyrinth of unintelligible wires, silicon chips, and motives that promise the predictability of the measured, virtual realm.

By contrast, the essence of the motorcycle is to thrust us into visceral, transformative reality, balanced precariously on two wheels, exposed to the elements, with every component of the motorcycle equally exposed, fitted, and designed for maximum aesthetic as well as functional effect. Unlike the virtual experience of a device, the physical experience of riding a motorcycle plunges us into the vivid, unexpected, constantly changing world of the real with all its very concrete ramifications.

At Janus Motorcycles, we intentionally build motorcycles that are “things”, not devices; machines whose purpose is to remind us of the joy of moving ourselves where and how we please, of “getting away with something”. By stripping away the accretions of efficient technology, they seek to uncover this visceral essence of the motorcycle. They lack all but the most essential instrumentation and they will certainly not pair with your smartphone. Instead, they focus on heightening this transformative experience of riding.