Copyright The Quipping Queen 2005.

A WORD ABOUT INTELLIGENT SHOES & DUMB SOULS

-- Or, Are You Walking on Thin Ice or Running Nowhere Fast? --

**By Professor Ovid Publius Hadweenzic, a latitudinarian linguist from University of Ecum Secum in Old Sweat, Nova Scotia (with an abiding interest in history of fetish footwear, how an Old Mother managed to raise her brood in a shoe, and why one sportswear company decided to market an “intelligent” sneaker in a world full of tortoises and hares with two left feet)**

The other day I set out on a scientific expedition of sorts to figure out why mankind invented “smart technology” in a hard-wired world full of dingbats, dorks, dumbbells, dunderheads, and dweebs (plus their close-relatives, affable but nevertheless intellectually-impaired nincompoops, ninny-hammers, nudniks, and numskulls).

Being an “egghead”, I’m used to living on margins of society with “nerdy geeks” and “aliens from outer space”. Like my humble companions, I’m committed to undertaking a perilous journey in search of “Big Bang” (that event that gave birth to blessed universe), “Big Bopper” (the one who presides over entire blinking place), and “Big Bad Wolf” (the darned devil in disguise who makes a mess by eating little grannies and blowing houses down just for heck of it).

My first inkling we had a problem was a glance at my on-line vault of vacuous thoughts, vapid experiences and often very misleading facts. Sure enough, my super-duper search engine revealed some delightfully dubious data:

· 125,000 web pages devoted to “smart technology” (with another 818,000 web pages dedicated to “smart people”) and

· 587 web pages dedicated to “dumb technology” (with a whopping 4,450,000 web page devoted to “dummies”, and an additional 129,000 web pages exposing all manner of things about “dumb people”).

Clearly these trivial tidbits of truth leave a lot to be desired. One could easily conclude, erroneously of course, that our lonely planet was inhabited by a plethora of “dummies”. First, “dumbfounded” elements of our society appear to outnumber “smarty pant” folks by a factor of 4:1. Second, “intelligent” tools and technologies do not appear to rank high on everyone’s hit parade of “fun” things to do or play with, (judging from long list of consumer complaints and short list of extraterrestrials who’ve actually dropped by for a peek at this peculiar place or declined to leave hospitable greetings).

It’s rather amazing indeed that “smart” folks with their “smart personal object technology” - (SPOT) are so clueless about what makes life worth living. I grew up with “Think & Do” books featuring adventures of Dick and Jane together with their animal companions PUFF and SPOT. Today’s kids grow up with a remote control device in their hands so they can flick on latest lessons about life from “Big Bird” and “Teletubblies”.