Nike iD - web site - Brief Article

nikeid.nike.com

In the realm of new media, where you can customize a homepage and choose your own path through a narrative, personalization is king, but in the world of manufacturing it remains largely a dream. Nike iD takes a step toward making it real, letting you build your own "unique" pair of shoes by selecting the colors and adding a personal ID--a combination of letters (but apparently not s-w-e-a-t-s-h-o-p) and numbers to appear on the shoes as a kind of vanity plate for the foot. Once you've entered all the information, the customized product is delivered within weeks. It seems that where consumer culture is concerned, Picasso's "originality" wins over Duchamp's readymade.

Lev Manovich is the author of The Language of New Media, forthcoming from MIT Press this spring. A new-media artist, critic, and theorist, he teaches in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.

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