terryjohaldotcom

Nike+ iPod Sneakers - Tune Your Run

It had to happen eventually.

I remember back in the day of the discman, I had this idea. How if we could configure a music system such as it would be able to sense the pace at which one was walking and adjust the beat of the music to work in sync with the walker. Apple and Nike have now got together and launched the iPod compatible sneakers.

It looks to be a pedometer type sensor sensitive accelerometer that is inserted into one's shoe which then transmits wirelessly to the iPod nano. The iPod nano requires an attached receiver which records and displays the distance and pace [in imperial units or so it seems. Will there be a metric version I wonder]. But that's not all. When you get home, you need to celebrate your wheezing around the park by syncing to your achievements to nikeplus.com.

Remember each run. Analyze your performance. Break your last record. Stay in tune with your goals. Nikeplus.com keeps stats on every step. Check your speed, distance, and calories burned — by run, by week, or by month — all from a graphical interface as intuitive as it is stunning. [ref]

That must appeal to the inner German accountant in all of us. But that would not be enough. What about the athlete all the advertising tells us we are? Not to fret.

Nikeplus.com keeps you connected with runners from every corner of the web. And that’s where the real race begins. Use nikeplus.com to challenge anyone, anywhere to a virtual race. Run on your own time, on your home turf, then log on to nikeplus.com to retrieve your results. [ref]

So I have now the shoe and the iPod and the Nike+iPod Sport Kit. I am ready to run and be all like this guy.

Connectivity and Silence

One price is a decrease in down time. James Katz, in his book Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, warns perpetual contact means "those who treasure respite may find themselves pressured to replace otherwise excusable isolation with productive tasks. Once ... being on board an airplane excused an executive from having to interact with colleagues. No more, for the fax and phone even follow at six miles high." Worldwide, he says, more people now own a phone than a TV.
Link: The person you called is switched off - Mobiles & Handhelds - Connectivity.

That space that we used to get away from being connected seems to get smaller and smaller all the time. We are rushing towards 24/7 connectivity, always-on-internet and the such, truely towards Gibson's vision of cyberspace - "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions ... in the non-space of the mind".

It always reminds me of ''The Machine Stops' by EM Foster.

But there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.
...
Then she broke down, for with the cessation of activity came an unexpected terror - silence. [full text].

For many of us, the death of a mobile  is a near catastrophic situation. We cannot call anyone, we cannot reach out and touch anyone. It not merely a phone but rather a pathway into our social arena, where our support network lives. It represents not just where we are but also all the places we could could go if only the rest could reach us.

I often switch my mobile off for hours on a weekend. I dont check my email. Dont read the news online. I have taken to walking aimlessly for hours.

It at almost the only time where I can hear myself think.