Running shoes have become overpriced status symbols for an undereducated public, built in 3rd world slave labor factories and sold at astronomical markups, and people pay these prices while adorning themselves with advertising for companies. Why do so many people pay such outrageous prices for shoes? Because the advertisements build an aura of mystique around the shoes.

The next step is a blend of high-tech and clever marketing: Running shoes that display ads for themselves while you wear them.

The shell of the shoe will be constructed, not with exotic materials like naugahyde, but instead with a flexible liquid crystal display. Power will be provided by rechargeable batteries located in the sole, along with the electronics. The batteries will be charged with the kinetic energy put into the shoe by the athlete through a set of coils in the heel that will move in a fixed magnetic field.

They will be programmable, so aftermarket sales will include “skins” for the shoes. Intense target marketing will insure that nobody will want to be seen with last week’s shoe ad. A hacker subculture may emerge with customized skins for people who don’t want be walking shoe company billboards.
-- MotoMannequin, Aug 19 2001

My hat's off to you PeterSealy, had to give it a +1, but damn, I thought this one was so off the wall I had to be the 1st. Anyway, you're right about the walking billboards, I intended this idea to be a little bit of a satire on that subject.
-- MotoMannequin, Aug 19 2001


I was hoping these would be running shoes which allowed the average office joe to run 1,500 miles at a single go without having to make financial arrangements to ensure he had a home to come back to when he had finished, or which would allow him to outpace a goat up a goat track to the summit of a hill, or to allow the user to become so absorbed in using them that civil disturbances, looting, escaped zoo animals and anarchy become unnoticeable.
-- UnaBubba, Aug 19 2001



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