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"If I had to get a new Ph.D. now, I'd get it in polymer engineering - the manipulation of matter."
- Bart Kosko
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| Digital Running Shoes | ||
| Shoes with a digital readout showing performance. |
I can't believe that Nike - or somebody - doesn't make one of these right now. You can buy pedometers that hook onto your belt or even tie onto your shoe, but why not just make it part of the shoe?
| David sat on the floor with limber grace and put Laura's foot in his lap. He unlaced her shoe and glanced at its readout. "That's pretty rotten time. You must have been limping, babe." |
| From Islands in the Net,
by Bruce Sterling. Published by William Morrow in 1988 Additional resources -
|
If people don't balk at paying $150 for a pair of running shoes, the materials necessary to make a running meter couldn't cost more than a few dollars.
The shoe could power the display; see the entry for stillsuit, from the novel Dune, by Frank Herbert.
As it turns out, there was such a thing as a runner's shoe with a digital readout. Called the Micropacer, it was created by Adidas in 1985. A sensor in the toe of the shoe connected to a microprocessor embedded in the tongue, which calculated speed, distance and the caloric output of the person wearing the shoe. The shoe was a failure. I've read that Adidas tried again recently in Europe with a third generation of this shoe.
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'...a 2045 convertible with a Hennis-Carleton positronic motor and an Armat chassis.'
'You can hook a Thorsen tube into a control circuit... and the tube will "remember" what was done and can direct the operation...'
Nature is a master of fabricating structured materials consisting of living and non-living components.
'The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another...'
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out."
'Improving man by bringing him close to Nature, while they combine the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the country well...'
