A Google Moonshot: Shoes
February 2, 2019
I read “Alphabet’s Verily Has Been Working on Health-tracking Shoes to Measure Movement, Weight and Falls.” The news that Apple cut off Google from the app store is trivial next to this announcement. The problems with France and other EU government authorities are inconsequential.
Google is innovating in — wait for it — shoes.
I learned:
Alphabet’s life sciences arm, Verily, has been looking for partners to co-develop shoes with sensors embedded to monitor the wearer’s movement and weight, as well as to measure falls, CNBC has learned.
Potential partners include the designers who created Rosa Klebb’s knife shoes for “From Russia with Love,” innovators who have implemented tootsie wear described by Richard Freiherr von Krafft–Ebing, and the manufacturer of shoes tailored to those skilled in the art of the shuffle dance.
The write up explained:
If Verily progresses with the project, the shoes could have a wide range of health-related uses. For instance, sudden weight gain can be a sign that the body is retaining fluid, which is a symptom of congestive heart failure. Another area of interest is fall detection, two of the people said, which could be useful for seniors in particular.
Product enhancements range from providing dagger shoes to those engaged in military operations, unusual shoes able to make digital recordings of interesting people have interactions, and YouTube shuffle dancers who put their health in peril performing moon walk moves.
With miniaturization, Google could encapsulate a variant of the Loon balloon, deploying the mechanism when signal boosting is required.
Now word on how the new initiative relates to solving death, another of Google-targeted problems.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2019
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