The Algorithm Wears Prada (and Crocs)
Every machine needs grip, cushioning, and a sense of style
Image generated by chatgpt (which is why it’s a bit odd)
Shoes are interfaces: they connect us to the terrain, buffer shocks, and signal who we are. Machines stumble through messy environments: they slip on bad data, bang into edge cases, and need to be legible to their human companions. So ….
Sneakers for the Search Engines
Google laces up Nike Pegasus: endlessly iterated, always running, same silhouette every year, but with incremental tweaks in cushioning or mesh. A shoe optimised for mileage without disruption. Bing, meanwhile, might wear Skechers Shape Ups, promising revolutionary toning but leaving you vaguely off-balance. Always running, forever almost the same.
Sandals for Large Language Models
LLMs wear Birkenstock Arizonas: simple straps, endlessly adaptable, dressed up or down without trying. They’re everywhere: on beaches, in boardrooms, on runways, and despite their awkward look, people keep coming back. Not built for mastery, but reliable, versatile, and oddly indispensable. Useful everywhere, flawless nowhere.
Couture Boots for Quantum Computers
Quantum machines strut in Maison Margiela Tabi boots. The split toe embodies superposition: half absurd, half sublime, until you collapse the wavefunction and decide whether you hate them. Like qubits, they are powerful, expensive, and incomprehensible to most of the public. Every step a paradox, stitched in leather.
Work Boots for Blockchains
Blockchains lumber around in Timberland Steel Toe boots. Heavy, indestructible, sometimes overbuilt for the actual job. But you trust them to hold up under load, even if the terrain is mostly flat. Every step recorded, impossible to erase.
Foam Clogs for the Domestic Robots
Roombas wear Crocs. Round, perforated, foam-based, and mocked by design elites yet impossible to ignore. Crocs, like Roombas, are the most democratic form of automation: a little clumsy, occasionally ridiculous, but relentlessly useful. Foam and function, carrying on regardless.
Minimalist Soles for Martian Rovers
NASA’s Perseverance is a Vibram FiveFingers. Toes splayed wide, hugging regolith, awkward in appearance yet sublime in precision. Each rubberized digit samples the surface while transmitting selfies back to Earth. No other footwear conveys both alien awkwardness and pioneering grit. Exploration looks awkward until it becomes iconic.
Chunky Sneakers for Image Generators
DALL·E or Midjourney wears Balenciaga Triple S. Over-layered, maximalist, often uncanny. One moment they’re sublime cathedrals at sunset, the next they’re distorted hands and melted shoes. Fashion, like generative imagery, thrives in the tension between shock and delight. Spectacle and distortion, laced into the same sole.
Sleek Sneakers for Optimisation Algorithms
Prada’s Linea Rossa sneakers fit the part. Minimalist, engineered, a studied balance of performance and polish. Optimisation systems (the engines that schedule flights, route deliveries, and price markets) might wear them. They are exacting, tuned for efficiency, and unmistakably designed. Quiet power, precision driving every step.
Oxfords for the Mainframes
The COBOL-based mainframe wears orthopaedic Oxfords. Thick leather, unkillable stitching, hidden in basements across the Fortune 500. Ugly to outsiders, irreplaceable to insiders. The shoes you never notice until they outlast every trend. Endurance disguised as obsolescence.
While no one’s fitting a mainframe for orthopaedic brogues, the point here is about having a grip on reality, resilience under pressure, and a kind of style that makes technology legible to us - and just a little bit of lightness!