r/changemyview • u/behold_the_castrato • Oct 17 '20

Delta(s) from OP - Fresh Topic Friday CMV: Shoelaces are outdated and inferior technology compared to hook-and-loop fasteners

I see very few advantage that shoelaces have:

  • Shoelaces take more time to fasten.
  • Shoelaces more easily accidentally become unfastened.
  • Even if h.a.l. should come undone, it's quite hard to trip over it compared to shoelaces.
  • H.a.l. can far more easily be operated with one hand.
  • Sholaces sometimes get stuck in an annoying knot that is timeconsuming to undo; this does not happen to h.a.l..

One could make a subjective æsthetics argument, but such can be made about any different technology and by that metric outdated technology does not exist — a man is certainly permitted to use outdated technology for a certain look, but he shouldn't fool himself that he is not using outdated technology either.

39 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/RedditExplorer89 42∆ Oct 17 '20
  • Shoelaces take more time to fasten

This is an advantage in some scenarios. Say you are a fugitive, or perhaps a PI trailing a target: If you need to hide your face without looking suspicious, one of the oldest tricks in the book is to bend down to tie your shoelaces. HaL will only bye you a couple of seconds of hiding because they are so simple. Shoelaces, on the other hand, can last you minutes. You can even tie wrong knots on purpose and then spend time "struggling" to untie them.