Far be it for me to critique fashion. Half of the shirts in my closet I purchased more than five years ago, while the more recent half sputtered in care of various girlfriends who tried, bless their hearts, to give this writer a bit of style.
But I can’t help myself today, not after reading about these iCufflinks, care of CrunchGear. While the accompanying video there gets the point across, the extra photos at the designer Adafruit Industries’ website aren’t bad either.
So iCufflinks are LED-enhanced cufflinks that light up and pulsate in a breathing pattern similar to what your MacBook light looks like in sleep mode, according to the description. ‘Tasteful’ probably isn’t the right word, but I admit that I think there’s a certain geek-coolness factor to these.
I mean, we live in a world of flashmobs congregating in large public squares to sing Top 40 pop songs, so I think we’re past the point of embarrassment over something as minor as cufflinks.
But it got me thinking a bit about guys like James Bond and Batman. Two totally different sorts of heroes, but united quite similarly by their love and use of really cool gadgets. Now, iCufflinks aren’t exactly bat-shaped grappling hooks or exploding pens, but they’re more or less the beginning of some sort of future geek uniform that would be so wonderfully ridiculous and fun.
For instance, what if you’re wearing your iCufflinks and you add in some of these zShades, sunglasses that record video in HD from a first-person perspective? And your girlfriend? She’s sporting an iNecklace (mentioned on the Adafruit website but not shown). Sounds like the new “it” couple to me!
Possibilities sort of jump from there. Maybe the Nintendo Power Glove makes a comeback, except it would look a lot cooler somehow. Maybe you could make it more reflective and lose the buttons, or at least make the buttons do something more useful than control a 20 year-old game console.
Shoes, too. Every good man has a great pair of shoes. The choice here is almost too simple though — they still sell L.A. Gear’s light-up shoes (LA Lights) for adults! Hard to imagine we ever forgot about these.
Maybe I’m getting carried away here. Maybe the world isn’t ready for a man dressed in LED cufflinks, video-recording sunglasses, light-up shoes and a Nintendo Power Glove. Okay, nobody is ready for that. But it’s either that or living out our future lives in homemade Iron Man costumes.
I’m just saying, I don’t think I’d be too disappointed if some time in the not too distant future we all walked around at night looking like we were in a Daft Punk video. iCufflinks? That’s just the beginning.
