Neil Gershenfeld, author of When Things Start to Think, is a forward-thinking scientist with a rollicking sense of humor. So rollicking, in fact, that when he's serious, you can't always be sure. He seems to be serious, though, about his shoe fetish.
According to Gershenfeld, "...[S]hoes are in fact an ideal platform for computing. You almost always have your shoes with you; you don't need to remember to carry them along when you leave the house in the morning. There's plenty of space available in a shoe for circuitry -- no companies are yet fighting over access to your shoes, but they will. When you walk, watts of power pass through your feet and get dissipated in abrading your shoes and impacting the ground; it's possible to put materials in a shoe that produce a voltage when they're flexed, which can be used as a power source. With realistic generation efficiencies of a few percent there's plenty of energy available for a low-power computer."
This comes up in his discussion of a PAN (Personal Area Network) to connect accessories and sensors worn on various parts of the body. Your shoe computer will have all sorts of information about where you're looking, what you hear, and how you feel. Maybe even what you think. The better to serve you.
Sounds like fun, but for all his breadth of vision, I wonder whether Gershenfeld has anticipated some of the consequences for our culture -- our figures of speech and folk wisdom about shoes. Here are some thoughts.
Something bad has happened, and you expect another bad thing to happen as a result. Waiting for the other shoe to crash.
"As comfortable as an old shoe" -- but all the new sox require a later version.
If the shoe fits and you can guess the password, wear it.
Save your receipts in an old shoebox. Don't throw away the styrofoam "peanuts" -- the receipts will be electronic, too.
Shoehorn: your computer's audible alarm. You can shoehorn your way into dense pedestrian traffic.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. Treat them like royalty the whole while. Hope that they'll annoy their owner forever after with unwelcome comparisons, how much nicer it was with you.
All a man has to do is park his shoes under her bed, and she gets pregnant. Now that's carrying progress too far!
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