[3 Quarks Daily] The technofuture and-prehistory of toes : J'ai vu pour la première fois la semaine dernière ces étranges préservatifs pour pieds ou gants pour orteils. Analyse du design et des implications anthropologiques de ce nouveau produit dans 3 Quarks Daily, extrait:
While this is not immediately intuitive, it seems to me that Vibram’s expertise with rubber soles may in fact be central to its success with the toe-pocket design. This is because there is enormous variety in human toe forms, with the second toe sometimes being longer or shorter than the big toe, varying degrees of splay across toes and variations in the decrease of toe size from big to pinkie. The Vibram foot-glove, however, provides for an optimal pocket for each toe, while also creating an exoskeleton of sorts in rubber, which curves up and around the toe, even if it is incompletely filled. This is the central design innovation that makes the Vibram foot-glove workable in both functional as well as visual-aesthetic terms, rather like an underwire and padded bra. The technology serves to reorganize and re-form the flesh and bone of the body like an orthotic, but also to make it visible and consumable in a new way.
