I hope someday far more advanced aliens land so that we can all ask them if there is a God and then after that question everyone on this list can ask them about what makes the best bicycle. There has been some great information lately that I have enjoyed reading but the current debate is impossible to come to an answer. I look at things from a different perspective, if you have the correct materials and design a robot can assemble a bicycle better than a human being. It will always weld to the exact standard it is programed for. Would you feel safer riding in an airplane fully built with human hands or built by a machine. Is it more exciting to meet the welding robot that put your Ford Mustang together or a custom frame builder who built your bicycle? If we could determine what is best a room of robots could be built to do the job. I would still like that some person out there makes it by hand for me. There is the difference between production and craft. Craft is not art, though it may seem like it. Sam DiBartolomeo Riverside CA