The makers of the wheeled shoes promise to turbo-charge your daily stroll, allowing you to walk at 250% of your usual speed. Could they be the future of pedestrianism?
Walking is all right, isn’t it, but it’s a bit slow. A bit ponderous. Wouldn’t it be good if you could walk, but, like, go faster? That is the premise of Moonwalkers: a pair of wheeled shoes that promise you can walk at running speed, without any of the effort of actually running. “Walk how you usually do, and our AI adapts to you,” reads the website blurb. “It’s not skating; it’s genuinely walking, so no new skills are necessary to learn.”
The Moonwalkers sounded perfect. I don’t like learning new skills, but I do like the idea of going faster while putting in zero extra effort. That was enough. On a cold winter afternoon, I meet up with Joseph Yang, the lead software engineer on Moonwalkers at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, looking out across a swirling Hudson River. Yang, 26, pulls a pair of the vaunted Moonwalkers out of a canvas bag and sets them on the ground.
