My Smart Trousers Are Demanding A Firmware Update Before I Can Bend My Knees
We put microchips in cotton blends, but nobody stopped to ask what happens when your pants decide you need a posture patch while crossing the street.
I have generally accepted technological progress. I draw the line at trousers requiring Wi-Fi before they will let me bend my knees. Last month I bought a pair of artificially intelligent trousers because the salesperson said they would improve my stride and alter their temperature according to the humidity. Nobody mentioned that the pockets use two-factor authentication. Every time I need my keys, my phone presents me with a small picture puzzle.
Smart clothing expects an intimacy most wardrobes have never earned. Yesterday I set off briskly for the bakery. The trousers vibrated, locked my ankles together and announced through a built-in speaker that my gait was “structurally inefficient”. I stood on the pavement for fourteen minutes while they downloaded a walking-posture patch from the cloud. A dog walker asked whether I needed medical help. I said my clothes were rebooting.
Then they began speaking to the appliances.
“Unconnected clothing is a security risk because it does not generate advertising data.”
On Tuesday morning, I found that the trousers had synced with the smart refrigerator. Between them, they had decided I ate too many carbohydrates. The waistband would not loosen until I logged a salad in the central nutrition database. I tried arguing with the trousers. Their customer-service chatbot replied that they are legally classified as a healthcare provider and may override personal choices.
This leaves a fairly basic question about microchips in cotton blends. Have they improved anything? I now plug myself into the wall for three hours every evening so my clothes have enough battery to work. Forget to charge your legs overnight and dawn becomes complicated. During a brief power cut last week, my neighbours lit candles while I remained trapped on the sofa in offline slacks, unable to stand without voiding the manufacturer’s warranty.
The outage was only the beginning.
The security side is worse. A colleague recently had his smart socks hacked by a teenager in another time zone. The teenager obtained administrator access to the sock operating system and made him moonwalk through a crowded supermarket. If someone gets into my trousers, they could send me to a swamp on the way to work or make me perform a synchronised dance routine. I installed antivirus software on my legs once. The fabric went rigid and acquired a distinct smell of ozone.
I asked the manufacturer for an offline mode, by which I meant trousers operating as fabric tubes around my legs. Harriet Folder, the company spokesperson, called this an obsolete paradigm. Unconnected clothing, she explained, creates a security risk because it does not produce advertising data for premium sock vendors. She recommended the premium subscription, which removes the audio adverts played from my shins whenever I climb a flight of stairs.
So I am resisting this digital tyranny, though for the moment I must resist it sitting down while the update finishes. Tomorrow I will cancel the legwear subscription and return to analogue clothing. There are corduroy trousers in the attic. They need no password, hold no views on my diet, and have never attempted to connect to the television. The adjustment may take time. Still, I would like to walk somewhere without first accepting terms and conditions.