The Ball Bearing Delusion: An allegory
In the beginning, there was the wheel.
It was humble, revolutionary — and it changed everything. With the wheel came wagons, then bicycles, cars, trains, and skateboards. We became a species defined by motion. Transportation. As we moved faster, we dreamed bigger.
The final dream?
Teleportation.
At first, it was science fiction. Books were written. Movies were made. Then whispers in academia moved the needle in the transportation space. Many modes were explored. Wheels of different kinds, even wings for flying transportation, propellers for marine transportation. Then, in 2017, a paper dropped: “Ball Bearings is All You Need.”
It was dense, obscure, and wildly confident. It claimed that teleportation wasn’t mystical — it was mechanical. That with enough ball bearings, rotational friction could be so finely tuned, space itself would give way.
Most ignored it. Some didn’t.
A startup appeared: OpenTeleport. Its first product? A kick bike — overengineered, hyper-smooth, packed with hundreds of precision bearings. Based on scarping the earth of anything that resembled a smooth ball that could be used in the kick bike’s wheels. It didn’t teleport, of course. But it felt like it might.
The internet lit up. Influencers raved. Tech journalists wrote breathless headlines. “Everything will change.” The public was hypnotized by the idea of ball bearings leading to teleportation.
Then came the keynote.
OpenTeleport’s CEO walked onstage, arms wide.
“With just a few more ball bearings,” he said, “your kick bike will become a teleportation machine.”
Applause. Hysteria. Belief.
SKF, the old-school ball bearing company, saw its stock price explode. Valuation records globally. Research labs rebranded. Venture capitalists poured in money. The global economy briefly organized itself around small, spinning metal spheres.
Critics were dismissed. “You don’t get it.”
Skeptics were mocked. “It’s exponential.”
When someone asked why teleportation hadn’t happened yet, the answer was always the same:
“Just a few more ball bearings.”
Then came the cracks.
The bikes didn’t teleport. The bearings got heavier. The ride got worse. Engineers raised concerns. Physicists began leaving the conferences early. A whistleblower revealed that the foundational simulations had been faked — just loops of internal bearing satisfaction scores.
But the idea stayed.
Now, a new headline circulates every few months. Most recently:
“BallBearing-5 is coming in July: Now everything will change!”
And in certain corners of Rollerball Valley, they still whisper:
“We’re so close. Just a few more ball bearings. Then it will not only be teleportation. It will become SuperTeleportation!”
